
Class J-1"B7 15" 

Book -Ha 



PRESENTS 



BY 



THE ABOLITION OF 
INHERITANCE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

HEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE ABOLITION OF 
INHERITANCE 



BY 

HARLAN EUGENE READ 



iSetD gotk 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

All rights reserves 









Copyright, 1918 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotjijed. Published, July, 1918 



Gift 
Mrs. OtJsT. Wingo 
Jun. 2,1937 



y^O my wife and to our cMldren, 
Ul' Jolm and Katherine: and to 
all children of all parents every- 
where, for whom the future holds 
the glorious hope of equal oppor- 
tunity at the cradle. 



"This I assert to be a human right — that all workers are 
entitled to all reward ; and all transfer of money without serv- 
ice, in whatsoever form such transfer takes, is a direct viola- 
tion of that right." Haelan Eugene Read. 



PREFACE 

The Need of Great Funds for War. The Present Status of the 

Inheritance Tax. The Inheritance Privilege Must be 

Entirely Abolished. 

Marshall Field died in 1906. His immense for- 
tune, estimated at one hundred and twenty -five mil- 
lion, passed into the hands of trustees for his grand- 
sons, then twelve and ten years old respectively, 
to be held for them, on account of their incapacity, 
until they should become fifty years old. The pub- 
lic was suddenly shaken from what Milton calls 
" the secure falsity of an old opinion " ; viz., that 
great fortunes are quickly dissolved in the hands of 
heirs, and therefore not dangerous. The certainty 
that our law of inheritance can and does create a 
money aristocracy as dangerous as monarchy itself, 
was vigorously discussed in press, pulpit and plat- 
form. The Chicago Tribune and nearly every other 
big paper in the country printed the Marshall 
Field will in full. Theodore Roosevelt, then Presi- 
dent of the United States, always quick to under- 
stand and respond to the current of popular 
thought, injected into his annual message ^ the 

1 President's Message to the 60th Congress, Dec, 1907 : " The 

IX 



X PKEFACE 

principle of a special and graduated tax upon swol- 
len inheritances.^ We of the United States sud- 
denly discovered that we were not as far advanced 
as other nations in this respect,^ Switzerland, for 
instance, Italy, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, 
Tasmania! Such discoveries are humiliating. 

Handicapped by our state constitutions, as to 
methods of taxation, the people of the United 
States began to take up the theory of inheritance 
taxes seriously — intending to make inheritance 

Government has the absolute right to decide as to the terms 
upon which a man shall receive a bequest or devise from 
another. — A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune 
is in no way such a tax upon thrift and industry as a like tax 
would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to 
the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the 
money, by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the 
enormous fortunes that would be affected by such a tax. — Our 
aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out^ — to insist that 
there should be an equality of right before the law, and at least 
an approximate equality in the conditions under which each 
man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when 
compared to his fellows." 

1 There are two ways of restricting inheritance, taxation and 
escheat. The method of taxation most in favour is a graduated 
tax, that is a tax increasing in percentage as the fortune grows 
larger. The method of escheat most frequently referred to is 
the establishment of a maximum amount allowed to be inherited 
by any one heir. Some early writers, notably John Stuart 
Mill, recommended the plan of escheat ; but the overwhelming 
preponderance of choice as to method is today in favour of a 
gradually increasing tax. 

2 See Blakemore & Bancroft Inheritance Taxes, pp. 13 et seq. 



PREFACE xi 

taxes a substantial part of the revenues of states.^ 
The subject became an important one in nearly 
every state in the Union, not so much with reference 
to the making of laws ( for inheritance laws then ex- 
isted in all but nine of our states), but rather with 
reference to the spiritual values that belong to pub- 
lic discussion and moral awakening. 

Even before the beginning of the European War 
in August, 1914, the people as a body were suffi- 
ciently roused to produce a considerable result in 
concrete action. Up to January 1, 1917, forty-three 
states ^ had inheritance tax laws ranging from a 
minimum of 1 per cent on direct inheritance in 
seven states, to a maximum in California where di- 
rect inheritances are now being taxed from 1 to 
15 per cent and collateral inheritances from 3 to 
SO per cent, which is designated by Mr. Bancroft 

1 In Illinois tbe method of escheat was proposed but defeated 
in 1887, the state adopting the progressive inheritance tax in- 
stead, eight years later. The defeated bill was introduced to 
the legislature on recommendation of the State Bar Association, 
and proposed a limit of $500,000 on direct and $100,000 on col- 
lateral inheritances, 

2 The five states without inheritance tax laws on January 1, 
1917, were: Alabama, Florida, New Mexico, Mississippi and 
South Carolina ^ — all southern states. Prof, E, R. A. Seligman 
in Essays on Taxation (Macmillan), p. 133, says: "The in- 
heritance tax today scarcely needs defence. It is found in 
nearly every country ; and the more democratic the country, the 
more developed is the tax." 



xii PREFACE 

as " a near approacli to confiscation/' In most of 
the states on Jannary 1, 1917, the minimum direct 
tax was 1 per cent, the maximum 3 to 5 per cent.^ 

With our entrance into the Great War, how- 
ever, the impetus given to the subject of the taxa- 
tion of inheritances has become greater than before. 

From January 1, 1917, to the present date, April 
1, 1918, twenty-three states have amended their in- 
heritance tax laws, the object in every case being 
to make them more rigid. In nine of these states 
taxes were considerably increased. These nine 
states were Arkansas, Connecticut, Missouri, Ore- 
gon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, Wiscon- 
sin, and Virginia. In Mississippi about April 1, 
1918, an inheritance law was passed for the first 
time. This reduced the number of states without 
inheritance laws to four, namely, Alabama, Flor- 
ida, New Mexico and South Carolina. 

The Federal Government increased its rates 
twice during 1917. The Federal law of September 
8, 1916, established a scale of rates from 1 to 10 
per cent; on March 3, 1917, the rates were raised 
to 1% to 15 per cent and on October 3, 1917, a 
special war tax raised them to a scale running 
from 2 to 25 per cent, the 25 per cent applying to 
fortunes over $10,000,000. 

iSee Appendix I. 



PEEFACE xiii 

There are now twenty-one states in wMcli tlie 
state tax runs as high as 10 per cent or more on 
collateral inheritances of the most remote degree 
and of the largest amount. There are fifteen states 
where these state rates reach a maximum of 15 per 
cent or more, and four states where the maximum 
rate is 25 per cent or over, namely, Arkansas 32 
per cent, California 30 per cent, Missouri 30 per 
cent, and Nevada 25 per cent. Thus a fortune of 
110,000,000 or more, left by inheritance in Arkan- 
sas to a collateral of the most remote degree or a 
stranger in blood, will pay a tax of 32 per cent to 
the state and 25 per cent to the nation ; in Missouri 
and California 30 per cent to the state and 25 per 
cent to the nation; in Nevada 25 per cent to the 
state and 25 per cent to the nation. 

It must be remembered, however, that these ex- 
treme rates just mentioned apply only to large 
amounts and remote degrees of relationship. In 
California, for instance, the widow or a minor 
child has an exemption under the state law of 
|24,000 and an exemption under the federal law of 
$50,000. The California rate starts at 1 per cent, 
the federal rate at 2 per cent. These rates do not 
become really confiscatory, even when combined, 
except in the case of a collateral who inherits a 
vast sum. 



xiv PKEFACE 

A comparison of the table of rates on January 
1, 1918,^ with the similar table of rates on January 
1, 1917, presented in the appendix will show what 
tremendous strides were made in inheritance taxes 
throughout the United States during 1917'. The 
increases in rates during 1917 furnish ample evi- 
dence of the importance attached to inheritance 
taxation as a fiscal measure by our legislators. 
They do more than this. They furnish evidence of 
the change that has been gradually taking place in 
civilized minds toward the institution of inherit- 
ance itself; and the present attitude toward in- 
heritance reform, as toward many other reforms, 
has been crystallized in the minds of men by the 
imperative financial demands of the great war. 

Necessarily the first question in regard to the 
support of the war is ^^ How much will it cost? " 
Be it said to the everlasting credit of the American 
people — there has been no weakness, no hesitancy, 
no delay, on account of the amount involved. 
Uncle Sam has proved himself as prodigal as he 
can be prudent, as bold as he can be conservative. 
Congress voted the first appropriation of two bil- 
lion dollars " with eyes shut,'' to paraphrase the 
now famous expression of Congressman Kitchin, 
and thus indicated its willingness to vote money 

1 See Appendix II. 



PEEFACE XV 

without stint for the support of the war. Seven- 
teen billion was appropriated for the first year of 
the war, — a sum equal to two-thirds of the entire 
expenditure of the United States Government from 
1789 to 1916.1 

The second question is, "Where will the money 
come from ? • ' The extraordinary burden of such 
a tremendously expensive war cannot be borne 
either in Europe or America, by the poor. It can- 
not be borne by industry. It must come from un- 
earned wealthy — and the form of unearned wealth 
that is the most easy to understand, the nature of 
which any child can comprehend, is inherited 
wealth. 

Students who are interested in the history of the 
movement in favour of increased inheritance taxes 
will find valuable data in Blakemore and Bancroft,^ 
Max West,^^ and Hugh Bancroft.^ The early work 
of Blakemore and Bancroft and the later work of 
Bancroft alone are especially complete as to legal 
data ; ^ but the most interesting fact connected with 

iThe total expenditures of the United States Government 
for the first 127 years (1789-1916) were $26,150,991,471.00. 

2 Blakemore and Bancroft. Inheritance Taxes. 

3 Max West, Monograph on the Inheritance Tax, Columbia 
University Studies, Vol. 4, p. 180 et seq., Columbia College, N. Y. 

4 Hugh Bancroft. Inheritance Taxes for Investors. 
6 See Appendix III. 



xvi PREFACE 

this historical and legal data is that courts have 
upheld the constitutionality of the inheritance tax 
with almost absolute unanimity.^ These court de- 
cisions cover many vital points with regard to in- 
heritance taxes.^ 

That these decisions are based upon a fundamen- 
tal principle of English and American Lav/ may 
be easily appreciated when it is realized that they 
find their original sanction in law in Blackstone.'^ 

They have an equally strong justification from 
the standpoint of political economy as expressed 
in the profound sentiments of John Stuart Mill/ 

From the standpoint of practical politics the in- 
heritance tax meets every requirement of wisdom, 
simplicity and effectiveness ; ^ and the principle of 
cradle equality as to economic opportunity has been 
repeatedly emphasized by philosophers and moral- 
ists from Pascal ^ to Emerson ^ and is being voiced 
by hundreds of sincere writers, speakers and preach- 
ers today .^ 

Among thinkers everywhere there is a constantly 

1 See Appendix IV. 

2 See Appendix V. 

3 See Appendix VI. 

4 See Appendix VII. 

5 See Appendix VIII. 

6 Harvard Classics, XL VIII, 383. 

7 Harvard Classics, V, 51. 

8 See Appendix IX. 



PKEFACE xvii 

broadening view as to the wisdom and justice of in- 
creasing inheritance tax rates, especially as ap- 
plied to large fortunes ; but the present inheritance 
tax rates ^ do not even yet justify the conclusion 
that it is the intention of the United States Govern- 
ment ^ to secure as large a portion of its revenue 
as it should from the estates of deceased persons. 

The plan proposed in The Aholitiofi of Inheri- 
tance is that inheritance taxes shall be increased 
until they absorb all of the wealth that passes by 
descent, with exceptions in favour of widows' rights 
of dower and reasonable sums for the care and edu- 
cation of invalids and minor children. 

Because of the tremendous drain the present war 
will make upon our national resources, the dis- 
cussion of inheritances, the rights of heirs, the 
rights of non-heirs, and all the long train of topics 
which the subject naturally calls forth, is more 
than appropriate at this time. It is vital. 
Whether this war shall be paid for mainly by work- 
ers or mainly by beneficiaries of privilege is the 
great economic question of the period. 

The cost of the present war, at the end of the 
second year, was |75,950,000,000, a sum 'nearly 
four times as great as the total income of the United 

1 See Appendix II. 

2 See Appendix X. 



xviii PKEFACE 

States from 1789 to 1909/ only half of which was 
expended for wars and pensions. If the United 
States pays to the War-God a sum equal to only 
one-eighth of the cost of the war for the first two 
years (which would be less than her fair propor- 
tion ) , the amount will be as great as all her expendi- 
tures on war for the first one hundred and twenty 
years of her history. The only possible conclusion 
is that the workers will refuse to pay it. They will 
place the burden upon non-workers, who receive the 
surplus values of the world. 

Who are these non-workers, who receive the sur- 
plus values of industry? That is the question all 
the workers of the world are now asking, — the 
question they are forced to ask. And there is little 
doubt that in the search for them, the heir will first 
be found, because his lack of title through labour is 
undebatabie,^ and also because the amount of in- 
herited wealth is sufficient to pay the entire cost 
of the war unless that cost far exceeds^ even the 
wildest prophecies. 

1 See Booklet on War Loans and War Finances published by 
tbe Mechanics and Metals National Bank of New York. 

2 See Blackstone's Commentaries. (Vol. 2, Comm. 10 supra.) 

3 In 1862 the United States Special Revenue Commission re- 
ported that 2 per cent of the entire wealth of the nation changed 
hands each year. Today, Max West points out {Inheritance 



PREFACE xix 

Reference has been made to the unwillingness of 
workers to pay for the present war through tax- 
ation. It might be more to the point to state that 
workers cannot pay for the present war. There is 
a limit to the burden that can be placed upon the 
back of labour. The theory that wages tend to the 
margin of subsistence (i. e., to as low a point as the 
labourer can maintain life upon ) is an accepted doc- 
trine of political economy.^ When that point is 
reached, the wages of labour can go no lower. Re- 
sort is then had to bonding issues, requiring indus- 
try in the future to pay what industry cannot pay 
today. But there comeKS a limit even to that, and 
in the present war that limit has been nearly 
reached already. Our Civil War bills are not en- 
tirely paid, after fifty-six years, yet we have al- 

Tax, pp. 228 el seq.) that one thirty-third to one thirty-sixth of 
the private wealth of the country changes hands annually by in- 
heritance, and that if an exemption is made of $10,000.00 to 
each heir, one-fiftieth of our wealth, or 2 per cent, will still 
change hands annually, these figures being based upon a careful 
analysis of estates in New York and Massachusetts. The coun- 
try's wealth was estimated in 1913 by the United States Depart- 
ment of Commerce as 187 billion ; and on July 25, 1917, W. S. 
Kies, Vice-President of the National City Bank of New York, 
estimated it at 240 billion — two per cent of which is four billion 
eight hundred million dollars. 

1 See Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chap. VIII, p. 
75. John Stuart Mill, Political Economy, Bk. II, Ch. XI, p. 333. 
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Bk. Ill, Ch. VI. 



XX PREFACE 

ready appropriated for the first year of our partici- 
pation in the World War more than the entire cost 
of the Civil War, including pensions.^ If our in- 
dustries cannot pay the bill, either immediately or 
in the future, we must turn for funds to those who 
receive without labour.^ There is no other solu- 
tion. 

Of course, no one knows exactly how much added 
burden can be shifted upon our business men and 
labourers. That a certain amount can be and will 
be, goes without saying, but there seems to be a 
common agreement of minds upon the fact that the 
war has already produced burdens that cannot be 
deducted from either profits or wages in the form 
of ordinary taxation of property. 

The high taxes that Congress placed upon in- 
heritances on October 3, 1917 (2 to 25 per cent), 
added to the already existing state taxes (see ap- 
pendix I) naturally raised the question as to the 
justice of inheritance of money; and this book has 
been written for the purpose of examining the basis 

1 The Civil War cost in round numbers five billion dollars or 
three and a half million per day. Civil War pensions up to 
1916 have amounted to four and three-fourths billion. In 1915 
there was disbursed for pensions the sum of $164,387,942.00. 

2 " It is not fortunes that are earned, but those that are un- 
earned, that it is for the public good to put under limitation," 
John Stuart Mill, Book V, Ch. II, Sec. 3. 



PREFACE xxi 

upon which the privilege of inheritance exists. 

" The power to tax," said Chief Justice Marshall, 
"is the power to destroy." If it be shown that 
there can exist no right in reason or justice by 
which a child can inherit a million dollars, or a 
hundred million, will it not follow that, with tax- 
ation as the means, the wrong can easily and quickly 
be adjusted? Many of the arguments that are 
used in defence of an inheritance tax law are in 
reality basic arguments against the privilege of in- 
heritance itself.^ It is against the privilege of in- 
heritance itself that this book has been written; 
and it may be appropriate to say here, therefore, 
that The Abolition of Inheritance is by no 
means an argument for the inheritance tax merely 
as a revenue measure, nor a discussion of the vari- 
ous phases in the development and growth of that 
tax. It is an argument for the complete destruc- 
tion of the inheritance principle. 

That our system of inherited wealth was once 
necessary to the world's progress or useful to its 
political organizations, it is not the purpose of the 
author to deny. The family was the first natural 
political group, and until larger groups were 
formed, the self-protection of each family group 
demanded the inheritance of property within that 

1 See Appendix XI. 



xxii PREFACE 

group. In feudal ages, the dominance of ruling 
families made the same law of inheritance neces- 
sary, even to the extent of primo-geniture (or in- 
heritance by the eldest son only ) in order that the 
family power might be maintained. But when 
democracy came into the world, it became neces- 
sary to exterminate the idea of " family power." 
This has slowly been accomplished so far as the 
right to rule by virtue of birth is concerned. Be- 
ginning with the United States Revolutionary War 
in 1776 and the French Revolution a few years later, 
the world has progressed toward democracy until 
its principles now seem to be approaching universal 
recognition, as to forms of government. " Family 
power '' in government has served its day as a prin- 
ciple of progress and development. That it served 
the world well in feudal days may be admitted 
without modifying the fact that the time of its 
:final extermination has now come. 

But while " family power " as a factor of visible 
government is about to make its final exit from the 
stage of national life, the rules it evolved for its 
own protection have not yet been radically changed. 
Civilized nations ^ have long recognized that inherit- 

1 Augustus Caesar 6 a, d. imposed a 5 per cent, inheritance tax. 
Kerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Caracalla modi- 
:fied it, and it continued in force until tlie time of Gordian IV. 



PREFACE xxiii 

ances ouglit to be subjects of special taxation ; ^ 
many economists have declared against the princi- 
ple of collateral inheritance altogether; and some 
have boldly attacked all inheritance privileges, 
especially in cases of intestacy; but notwithstand- 
ing the general recognition of the fact that an in- 
heritance tax is essentially democratic, it has been 
and is still a comparatively small tax in the United 
States. As Max West, perhaps the greatest mod- 
ern authority upon the subject, has aptly said,^ 
" The inheritance tax seems to be pre-eminently an 
institution of democracy. It is found in nearly 
every civilized country on the globe, but it is only 
in the most democratic countries — Great Britain, 
France, Switzerland, Canada, the Australasian 
colonies — that it reaches its fullest development. 
The United States seems thus far to be an exception 
to this rule," 

While recognizing to its fullest extent the part 
that inheritance has played, in former ages, in 
holding together the resources and power of feudal 
families during periods of history when " family 
power " was important ; and while recognizing also 
that the conservatism of democratic peoples in ap- 

1 See Pollock and Maitland, History of EnglisU Laiv, Chap. 
VI, also, Blakemore and Bancroft, Inheritance Taxes, p. 13. 

2 Monograph on the Inheritance Tax, Max West, 1912. 



xxiv PREFACE 

proaching the present problem of swollen inheri- 
tances has been natural and perhaps excusable 
heretofore, I believe that the time for a sweep- 
ing reform along this line has now come. It was 
apparent a generation ago that the great danger of 
America was the rapid pyramiding of great for- 
tunes, many of the beneficiaries themselves realiz- 
ing it fully ; ^ but each year has seen an alarming 
increase of that danger, until today, with the 
world's greatest w^ar forcing us to devise new means 
of raising national revenue, it becomes a part of 
the leading question of the hour. 

In the discussion of the subject that is presented 
in this book, I have purposely refrained from com- 
menting in the text upon many legal and statistical 
aspects of the question to which reference has been 
made in the foot-notes and preface. This plan has 
been followed not only because citations and statis- 
tics are tiresome to the reader, and therefore best 
handled through foot-notes, but for other reasons 
as follows: 

First : Former laws are of interest only histor- 
ically. While reforms should always proceed with 
due regard to existing constitutional obligations, 
the laws of the past do not and cannot affect the 
fundamental rights of man. My argument is for 

1 See Appendix XII. 



PREFACE XXV 

the destruction of the inheritance privilege no mat- 
ter how much or how little may have been done 
previously along this line by law-makers; and no 
matter whether heirs are receiving without labour 
one-half of the world's wealth or two-thirds of it. 
As an historian I am interested to know how many- 
states in the Union and how many countries in the 
world have a form of inheritance tax — but as a 
reformer I am only interested in showing why in 
all states and all countries the privilege of inheri- 
tance should be utterly abolished» As a statis- 
tician I am interested to know what amount of 
revenue was brought into the treasury of New 
York by the Inheritance Tax in 1916, but as a 
friend of mankind I am only interested in showing 
you that the privilege of securing money without 
earning it is morally wrong and must be destroyed. 
As an admirer of Blackstone I am interested in 
knowing that the great jurist declared inheritance 
to be a civil convenience only, and not a nat- 
ural right — but as a logician I am only interested 
in showing you that the principle of inheritance is 
morally wrong and unjust, whether Blackstone said 
it or not. This book is intended to be a logical 
proof of the worker's right to what he produces and 
of the violation done to that right by our system of 
inheritances. 



xxvi PREFACE 

Second: The presentation of side comments of 
an historical, judicial or statistical nature is con- 
fusing to the average mind, interrupting the logical 
sequence of the argument and detracting from its 
power. 

Third : The quoting of statistics, dates or opin- 
ions is unnecessary when the truth sought to be 
made clear is that the practice attacked is entirely 
wrong. For example, burglary is wrong regardless 
of the amount of booty secured. The common ob- 
servations of the average man have taught him the 
importance of the subject of inheritance to his own 
welfare. He need not know the exact value of 
Vincent Astor's inherited fortune. He merely 
needs to know that, whether it is one hundred 
million or eight hundred million, it was unearned 
by Vincent Astor. He does not need to know the 
exact number of children in South Carolina who are 
working in sweatshops, nor the exact number dead 
of tuberculosis in New York City, nor the official 
count of unemployed men in Pennsylvania. All 
these items are of interest and value to some peo- 
ple, but I have not stopped to present them because 
I have had something more vital on hand than the 
counting of the wounded or the numbering of the 
dead; and I am willing to risk the carping and 
faultfinding of those small souls who refuse to 



PREFACE xxvii 

slioot a coyote until they have ascertained how 
many sheep it has killed and whether or not it has 
been led by precedent to believe it has the right to 
kill sheep. 

After one becomes convinced of the right or 
wrong of any proposed reform, his interest in its 
progress becomes quite a different thing from the 
quibblings of those reactionaries who attempt to 
throw statistics, dates and precedents as stumbling 
blocks in the path of the honest investigator. For 
the benefit and instruction of those who are inter- 
ested, I have endeavoured, through foot-notes, to re- 
fer the student to the chief sources of legal and 
statistical information ; but as the argument against 
the principle of inheritance is fundamental, and 
based upon natural rights ^ my endeavour has been 
to keep the text itself simple, plain and directly 
argumentative, appealing solely to those who have 
the courage to think for themselves, freed from the 
awe of precedent and unhindered by the thought 
of those political sanctities claimed now, as they 
have always been, by the beneficiaries of govern- 
mental privilege. 

Harlan Eugene Read. 

April 1, 1918. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Blakemore and Bancroft, Inheritance Taxes. 

Max West, The Inheritance Tax, Columbia University Studies, 
Vol. 4, p. ISO. 
" Theory of the Inheritance Tax," Pol 8g. Quar., Vol. VIII, 
No. 3. 

John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Bk. V, Ch. 
XI, Sec. 3, Bk. V, Ch. II, Sec. 7, Bk. V, Ch. IV, Sec. 1, 
Bk. II, Ch. II, Sec. 3 and 4. 

Robt. H. Whitten, Address at National Tax Conference, 1901, 

J. S. Nicholson, Encyclopedia Brittanica, " Taxation." 

Sir Wm. Blackstone, Commentaries, Vol. I, Bk. II. 

Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Vol. 2, Ch. VI. 

J. B. Say, Cours complet d'economic politique, Bk. 3. Ch. 9. 

R. T. Ely, Taxation in American States and Cities, Ch. VIII, pp. 
515-523. 
"The Inheritance of Property," N. Am. Rev., Vol. 153, 

p. 54. 
Outlines of Economics, pp. 637-640. 

Augustus Jacobson, Higher Ground, pp. 194r-202. 

C. F. Bastable, PuUic Finance, Book IV, Ch. IX. 

Hugh Bancroft, Inheritance Taxes for Investors. 

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Ch. Ill and IV. 
Social Problems, Ch. X. 

Chas. J. Bullock, " Position of the Inheritance Tax in American 
Taxation," National Tax Association. 

George A. Richardson, King Mammon. 

Solomon Huebner, " Inheritance Tax in the American Common- 
wealth," Quar. Jour, of Econ., 18 : 529-50. 

United States Government, Inheritance Tax Laws, Senate Docu- 
ment No. 114, 61st Congress, 1st Session. 
Inheritance Tax Laws, Same, House Doc. No. 34. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 

W. T. Bell, " Should Death Duties Be Increased? " Westminster 
Rev. 165 : 880-86. 

E. R. A. Seligman, Essays in Taxation, pp. 121-135. 

President Roosevelt, Message to 60th Congress, 1st Session, De- 
cember, 1907. 

Walter Logan, Limitation of Inheritances. 

James A. Roberts, " Progressive Inheritance Tax," Forum, Vol. 
23, pp. 257-270, May, 1897. 

P. S. Post, Jr., " The Problem of Enormous Fortunes," Outlook, 
Vol. 85, pp. 21-25, Jan. 5, 1907. 

Arthur B, Hayes, " Inheritance Taxes," Arena, Vol. 38, pp. 
26-33, January, 1908. 

Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth, Chap. I. 

Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes. 

Report of Minnesota Tax Commission, 1910. 

Digest of Inheritance Tax Laws, Dept of Commerce and 
Labor, 1907. 

Proceedings of N. Y. State Bar Assn., Vol 23, pp. 21^2. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART I.— IMPORTANT PRELIMINARY CONSID- 
ERATIONS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Subject Stated 3 

II Ignorance Concerning Human Rights ... 6 

III The Courage to Think 8 

IV The Right of Producers to All Property . . 12 
V Inheritance Violates the Producer's Right . 17 

VI Heies are Supported by Their Own Generation 21 
VII Inheritance a Privilege, Not a Right ... 28 

PART II.— INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM THE 
STANDPOINT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 

VIII The Right of the Dead to Give 35 

IX The Right of Heirs to Receive . . . . . 46 

X Basis of Natural Right to Property ... 54 

XI The Last Will and Testament 65 

XII " Divine Right of Kings," — and of Heirs . . 72 

XIII Arguments for Monarchy and Inheritance 

Identical. The Inheritance Principle A 
Root Evil 80 

PART III.— INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM 
THE STANDPOINT OF ECONOMIC RESULTS 

XIV Concentration of Wealth in the United 

States . . . .93 

XV Concentrated Wealth the Ruin of Former 

Nations 103 

XVI Historic Attempts to Che^k the Concentra- 
tion OF Wealth 105 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII How Inherited Wealth Causes Inherited Pov- 
erty 109 

XVIII Inheritance System the Centre of Corruption 123 

PART IV.— INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM 

THE STANDPOINT OF MODERN IDEALS 

OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 

XIX Not a Product of Civilization but an Accom- 
panying Evil 135 

XX Antiquity l^ot a Defence of Wrong .... 144 
XXI Precedent a Legal, not a Moral or Economic 

Defence 148 

XXII The Rightful Ownership of the Property of 

the Dead 158 

PART v.— INHERITANCE AND SENTIMENT 

XXIII The Sentiment of Parents for Children . . 169 

XXIV Concerning Superior Natural Endowments . 187 

PART VI.— THE CLAIM OF EXPEDIENCY 

XXV Privilege Not Justified in Nature .... 195 
XXVI Hypocrisy of the Expediency Argument . . 201 
XXVII Expediency Arguments False. Who Its Sup- 
porters Are 208 

XXVIII Results 213 

XXIX Abolition of Inheritance Necessary Before 

Other Reforms can be Secured 227 

PART VIL— THE REMEDY 

XXX Taxation the Means of Remedy 243 

XXXI The Struggle 248 

XXXII Conclusion 253 

Answers to Common Objections 267 

Appendix 291 

Index 205 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 

Written after seeing Millet's Famous Painting. 

" God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created He him." 

Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans 

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 

The emptiness of ages in his face 

And on his back the burden of the world. 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? 

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave 

To have dominion over sea and land ; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power ; 

To feel the passion of eternity? 

Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 

And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? 

Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 

There is no shape more terrible than this — 

More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed — 

More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 

More packed with danger to the universe. 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim ! 
Slave of the wheel of labour, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 
What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look ; 
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop ; 
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, 
Plundered, profaned and disinherited, 
Cries protest to the Judges of the World, 
A protest that is also prophecy. 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands. 

Is this the handiwork you give to God, 

This monstrous thing, distorted and soul-quenched? 

How will you ever straighten up this shape ; 

Touch it again with immortality ; 

Give back the upward looking and the light ; 

Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 

Make right the immemorial infamies. 

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? 

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
How will the Future reckon with this man? 
How answer his brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings- — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb terror shall reply to God, 
After the silence of the centuries? 

Edwin Maekham. 



PART I 

IMPORTANT PRELIMINARY 
CONSIDERATIONS 



THE 
ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

CHAPTER I 

THE SUBJECT STATED 

I AM to write to you of the means whereby each 
generation may be free of the inequalities of the 
past. I intend to prove to you that inherited 
wealth is the foe of freedom ; — that it is a violation 
of the rights of the unborn ; that it is the perpetu- 
ator of inequalities, robbing the cradle of its op- 
portunity and fastening upon a living generation 
the authority of the tomb ; that it must follow mon- 
archy and slavery into the record of things past, 
because it is like them both in essence and in de- 
tail. Inherited wealth is the father of poverty and 
aristocracy, and the hearts of mankind today are 
sick unto death of both. 

The case against inherited wealth is simple and 
clear, but the evil has been so long entrenched, and 
the minds of men are so reluctant to admit the ex- 

3 



4 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

istence of a new world or a revolutionary thought, 
that I ask your most careful and honest attention 
to my arguments. I ask you to forget for a time 
all preconceived ideas and to open your minds 
frankly and liberally to the truth, no matter how 
strange and new it may appear. I ask you to for- 
get, for the time, all obstacles to the accomplish- 
ment of the proposed reform and merely to con- 
sider whether the principle of inheritance is right 
or wrong. When that question is settled we will 
consider next what can be done to remedy the con- 
dition in which we find ourselves. But first let us 
seek with open mind to discover what is right. 

I must assume, at the outset of my argument, that 
each reader is interested, — deeply interested — in 
the vital problem I am to present. I must take it 
for granted that I am writing for sane, healthy, 
earnest men and women; who feel, as I do, the 
miseries of little children; who hear, as I do, the 
groaning of strong men burdened with the yoke of 
undeserved poverty; who hope, as I do, that the 
time of deliverance is at hand. More than that, — 
I must assume that my proposal to destroy the 
privilege of inheriting fortunes suggests a possi- 
bility of relief that is well worth the thought that 
you, as readers, have undertaken to give it. 

Let me explain then, at the very beginning, that 



THE SUBJECT STATED 5 

it lias been necessary for me to lay a foundation 
in the first seven chapters (pages 1 to 32) con- 
sisting of certain fundamental principles which 
each reader must clearly understand before under- 
taking to read the argument that follows. I shall 
make those chapters as interesting as I can — with 
the earnest hope and prayer that you will read them 
patiently — may I hope even eagerly? — in the de- 
sire to lay a secure foundation for my subsequent 
presentation of the subject. And here let me say, 
too, that while I should like the respect and ap- 
proval of political economists I have not written in 
their terminology, but in the language of common 
speech, hoping to convince you not of my scholar- 
ship but of the truth of what I say, expressed in 
language that all people of ordinary education can 
understand. 



CHAPTER II 

IGNORANCE CONCERNING HUMAN RIGHTS 

The Declaration of Rights was issued by the French 
people at the time of the French Revolution. I de- 
sire at the beginning of this inquiry to call your 
attention to one of its sentences. 

" Ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights 
are the sole causes of public misfortunes.'^ 

Ignorance; neglect; contempt. Note the three 
words. They afford a simple classification of all 
those people who are not definitely working for 
the recognition of human rights. The vast major- 
ity are ignorant of what their rights are^ to say 
nothing of the means for attaining them. Of the 
remainder, those who really know what the rights 
of men are, some neglect either to secure their own 
rights, or to grant those of their fellow citizens, 
while others are definitely opposed to justice and 
liberty, and fight against them in every conceivable 
manner. 

To those who look upon the rights of the disin- 
herited with contempt no word need be said save 

6 



IGNORAIS^CE CONCERNING RIGHTS 7 

a word of warning as to the political adjustment 
that is certain to take place within a few years in 
all civilized countries. To those so callous to the 
cries of the poor as to turn to them the deaf ear of 
neglect^ an appeal through logic and reason may be 
useless. But for the sake of those who fail to 
understand their rights, or the rights of others, 
through ignorance, no labour of education or ex- 
hortation ought to be too tedious to be undertaken 
by those who love mankind and wish it well; and 
I have therefore written this argument especially 
for those earnest persons who, having a good under- 
standing of many other problems of life, are igno- 
rant of the extent to which inherited wealth brings 
into the world poverty and takes out of it that 
liberty, fraternity and equality that we have come 
to designate by the single word democracy. I shall 
make every attempt to state each proposition in its 
clearest and most simple form, requiring of the 
reader not deep scholarship, but merely the cour- 
age to think. 



CHAPTER III 

THE COURAGE TO THINK 

So important do I consider this courage to think 
that I desire to call your attention to a few simple 
historical illustrations of changes in the world^s 
thought that have been more revolutionary than the 
one herein proposed; because the consideration of 
them will have a tendency to enlarge the vision and 
free the mind. 

Until 1492 practically the entire world believed 
that the world was stationary and flat. Geogra- 
phers declared it. Theologians proved it by the 
Bible. Many who denied it were sent to the stake. 
Yet, Sir John Mandeville, knight, traveller and 
geographer, had written in 1352, a complete scien- 
tific demonstration of the sphericity of the earth ; ^ 
— one hundred and forty years before the New 
World was discovered ; and it took a courage almost 
unequalled in history for Columbus to demonstrate 
practically what had been proved scientifically a 
century and a half before, — what sailors and travel- 

1 Ridpath, History of the World, Vol. V, Book 17, p. 161. 

8 



THE COURAGE TO THINK 9 

iers had thought they perceived with their glasses 
for hundreds of years. 

Another familiar illustration of a significant 
change in the world's thought that required cen- 
turies is slavery. The right of man to be free of 
masters has always existed, but the United States 
was the last great nation to recognize it, and men 
are still living who believe in the justice of the in- 
stitution of human bondage. 

A third illustration is monarchy. It has taken 
all the history of the world thus far to convince 
mankind that God did not personally appoint and 
ordain kings to rule by divine right ; and there are 
many who still believe it, including kings and 
others. But monarchy has been discredited and 
opposed for three hundred years and is today in 
the last stages of extinction. 

It requires a most tremendous effort to right any 
established wrong. Think what a sacrifice of 
wealth, comfort and of life itself has been necessary 
to overcome so plain an evil as the burning of 
witches.^ Even Martin Luther believed in devils 
who travelled around the country clapping horns 

1 Several hundred thousands of innocent persons were ex- 
ecuted for witchcraft in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. Ridpath, History of the World, Vol. VI, Book 19, 
p. 525. 



10 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

upon the heads of bewitched people, or changing 
human hands to griffin's claws, and our own fore- 
fathers in Salem solemnly burned old women whose 
only offence was that some frantic child in the 
neighbourhood had had a fit. 

Men endorse the most ridiculous and wicked ab- 
surdities because they are afraid to think, and fear 
to trust the plain evidences of reason. 

The hardest thing in the world is to free the mind. 
The divinest possessions of man are reason and 
courage — the power to think and the courage to 
believe what reason has presented. 

The power to reason correctly on certain funda- 
mental subjects is not learned in schools and does 
not depend upon scholarship. Even the most ig- 
norant of men have the ability to think and to de- 
cide for themselves the great essentials. 

For instance, it may require a board of statis- 
ticians to decide how money should be divided be- 
tween five hundred labourers and five capitalists 
who are at work together. But it does not require 
anything beyond the most ordinary reason to see 
that he who does nothing at all is entitled to noth- 
ing at all. Yet upon this simple proposition hangs 
the fate of a world torn asunder by war and deci- 
mated by the scourge of poverty. 

Free your mind then, my friend! Do not deny 



THE COURAGE TO THINK 11 

the divinity of your own common sense. Think 
simply and deeply if you can, but honestly at all 
costs and we shall travel one of the paths to in- 
dustrial freedom together. Do not be afraid of an 
idea because it is new to you. Open your mind to 
truth and join the company of those who believe 
what they see. Columbus is in this company, and 
Galileo and Bruno; Newton, Isaac Watts and 
Franklin; Cromwell, Patrick Henry and William 
Lloyd Garrison; Thomas Edison and Marconi; 
Tolstoi and Henry George. If, mayhap, the 
thought that bursts into your mind is more radical 
than your accustomed ideas, be of cheer, for you 
have good company, both among the crowned 
prophets of yesterday and the uncrowned kings of 
thought today. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RIGHT OF PRODUCERS TO ALL PROPERTY 

The two greatest documents ever written in behalf 
of the liberties of mankind are the American Declar- 
ation of Independence written by our forefathers 
during their rebellion from Great Britain, and the 
Declaration of Rights written by the French Na- 
tional Assembly in August, 17'89, when they threw 
off the yoke of hereditary aristocracy. In the 
Declaration of Independence the rights of man were 
broadly defined as life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness. In the Declaration of Rights, the 
French patriots defined these rights as liberty, 
property, security and the resistance of oppression. 
The right to the peaceable possession of the 
property that he creates is one of the inalienable 
rights of man,^ This principle, established as it is 

1 " The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense 
or wages of labour." Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, 
opening sentence of Chapter VIII. In this connection read 
Wealth of Nations, Chapters V to VIII inclusive and Henry- 
George's comment thereon in Progress and Poverty, Book I, 
Chapter III. See, also, Social Problems by Henry George, Chap. 
X. See also, the French Declaration of Rights, Article VI. A 

12 



EIGHT OF PRODUCERS 13 

by all civilized peoples, might reasonably be taken 
for granted as the basis of our thought. But since 
there may be some readers who have never had the 
reasons for this clearly presented to their attention, 
I shall, in passing, briefly mention them. 

First: The word property itself indicates pro- 
prietorship, and it is merely stating a truism to 
say that all property must belong to some pro- 
prietor or proprietors. It must either belong origi- 
nally to the person or persons who create it with 
hand or brain, or it must belong in whole or in 
part, to those who do not create it. Since it can- 
not belong to the latter in the beginning, there being 
yet no pretext at all for title on their part, the 
very absence of proper title in any one else neces- 
sarily leaves such original title to be vested in the 
creators of the wealth alone. Any assertion to the 
contrary would be an assertion of the right of 
property in others, or slavery. Hence, we are 
forced to the conclusion that the first title to all 
property must reside in its producer. 

Second: The title of the worker is established 

complete and unanswerable defence of this principle, with spe- 
cial application to the question of inheritance, is found in J. S. 
Mill's Political Economy, Book II, Chap II. " The essential 
principle of property," says Mill, " is to assure all persons what 
they have produced by their labour and accumulated by their 
abstinence." (The italics are mine.) 



14 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

by the fact that the property would not exist with- 
out him, and his very power to refrain from pro- 
ducing, argues his right to the produce when it is 
created. There is no property in the real sense of 
the term that is not created by human labour. A 
forest is not available as wood until the hand of 
man has felled the trees and transformed them into 
lumber. A field is not of service to mankind until 
the plough has been put into the soil and the produce 
drawn from the bosom of the Earth Mother by 
human effort. Even the fruits of trees, the ber- 
ries upon the ground and the water in the spring 
are not of life-giving value until the effort of man 
has been put forth to bring them from where nature 
placed them, to the hand or mouth of the person to 
whose needs they minister. And since to the pro- 
ducer alone belongs the right to produce or to re- 
frain from producing, his right to the first or origi- 
nal title to any product must therefore be incon- 
testable. 

Third : The worker's right of choice as to what 
he shall produce is evidence of his title to the 
product. If any other person or persons may in 
justice claim the product after its creation, the 
same right whereby they claim it would logically 
embrace or include the complete authority to dic- 
tate what the worker should produce, and when, 



EIGHT OF PRODUCERS 15 

and how much ; in short, an absolute mastery over 
his life. There is no halfway point in production 
between freedom and slavery. To maintain that 
a man is free to produce what he chooses, and yet 
that the product belongs to another is a manifest 
absurdity. 

He who claims the right to appropriate my pro- 
duct must also claim the right to compel me to 
produce what he chooses, else his first claim is 
easily shown to be illogical and ridiculous. Con- 
versely, my own power to choose my own industrial 
occupation must infer an absolute proprietorship 
in my fair share of the result. 

Fourth: The employment of force, fraud or 
cleverness in taking property from its producer 
cannot create an inalienable right thereto for the 
victor. The very fact that an opposing and 
stronger force can take away the supposed right 
proves that the title of the first user of force was not 
inalienable according to his own definition of it. 
And that which contradicts itself cannot be true. 

Since property cannot be shown to belong origi- 
nally to any one else than its producer; since it 
cannot come into existence without him; since he 
cannot be compelled to produce at the command of 
another, except we admit slavery; and since force 
used in taking his property from him cannot con- 



16 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

fer a just title, we must therefore concede that 
one of the inalienable rights of man is the right to 
the peaceable possession of the property he creates. 
It is his by title of nature itself, for nature placed 
it first in his hand, to encourage and reward his 
labour. It is his by direct declaration of God who 
commanded that in the sweat of his face he should 
eat bread. ^ It is his to have and to use, to barter 
and exchange. It is his against all the world ; and 
any law designed to annul or abridge this right is a 
violation of the natural rights of man. 

The real source of human rights is not in docu- 
ments. It is in those sentiments of justice and 
liberty for which men have fought and sacrificed 
since the world began. And from the very exis- 
tence of these sentiments in our breasts, we know 
that the original title to property, if it be a just 
title can be vested only in the original producer of 
that property. I pass this subject, therefore, not 
as being completely disposed of here (for volumes 
could be written thereon, and have been, by most 
eminent writers) but as being taken and accepted 
universally by mankind. 

1 Genesis iii, 19. 



CHAPTEE V 

INHERITANCE VIOLATES THE PRODUCER'S RIGHT 

If^ then^ the right of a man to the property he 
creates is incontestable, let us see whether our sys- 
tem of inheritance interferes with this right. Let 
us consider whether the act of granting inheritances 
to children yet in the cradle is merely an act of 
kindness to those favoured children, or a mathe- 
matically demonstrable robbery of all other chil- 
dren. Let us examine into the justice or injustice 
of an inheritance of one hundred and sixty million 
dollars being granted to one boy ^ in a land where 
millions of workers are below the breadline, forced 
to work for less than enough to maintain a family 
in decency,^ and to take their little children out of 
schools to toil in factories for less food and cloth- 
ing than even health and common comfort require. 

1 Vincent Astor's fortune, inherited from his father, who per- 
ished in the Titanic disaster, was variously estimated from TO 
to 160 millions. The Astor fortune has come down from father 
to son for five generations, and was originally secured mainly 
through increases in the value of real estate. 

2 See Report of the United States Industrial Commission, 1915, 
quoted in Chapter XIV of this book. 

17 



18 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

The world rocks with the furious conflict of two 
classes of workers struggling for a fair share of the 
rewards of industry, roughly described as labour 
and capital. Yet it is impossible for either labour- 
ers or working capitalists, as such, to participate in 
the incomes from the uncounted millions of dol- 
lars ^ that quietly pass into the hands of heirs w^ho 
do nothing to earn them. 

Labour and capital are fighting to the death for 
only a part of the world's w^ealth, while the benefi- 
ciaries of privilege who are neither labourers nor 
working capitalists, live luxuriously, taking no 
part in productive enterprise, simply gathering 
more dividends and preparing to pass them on in 
time to others of their blood. 

I shall endeavour herein to show you that the 

1 Wbile exact information is not available, the following com- 
parison will be illuminating: In 1915 there were 7,509 persons 
in the United States who reported annual incomes of over 
$50,000.00, that is to say, 7,509 persons who acknowledged them- 
selves to be millionaires, since it would require a fortune of a 
million dollars, at least, to produce an income of $50,000 a year. 
The combined fortunes of these 7,509 people have been estimated 
at thirty-three billion dollars. An Act leaving to each estate 
one million dollars appropriating the remainder through tax- 
ation would produce $25,500,000,000.00, approximately a billion 
a year for a generation, which is nearly twice as much as the 
average expense of the U. S. Government from 1904 to 1915. 
The total ordinary expenditure of the U. S. Government from 
1789 to 1916, inclusive, a period of 127 years, has been $26,150,- 
991,471.00. 



VIOLATES THE PRODUCER'S RIGHT 19 

greatest power of the world is in the hands of those 
who inherit the accumulated values of past genera- 
tions; that there is no method whereby men who 
are entitled to all they produce, can get it while 
this important power is being bequeathed from gen- 
eration to generation to those who do not earn it; 
that a small part of the world is mad with money 
aristocracy while countless multitudes are crushed 
to earth by undeserved poverty; and that the 
remedy for this terrible condition is so simple that 
nothing but the most inexcusable blindness of soul 
is keeping the earth in misery. I shall show that 
the bequeathing of an estate to other than the man 
and woman who created it, constitutes a denial of 
the inalienable rights of all other men and women to 
the property they create. And I ask you to ex- 
amine the claims upon which this denial of human 
rights is based, and see whether there can be any 
sentiment, either of justice or of benevolence, upon 
which our law of inheritance is founded. 

The moment that we admit that self-effort is the 
foundation of a just claim to wealth, that moment 
does the doctrine of hereditary succession to wealth 
become an absurdity. The w^ealth of the world is 
the product of all the labour of the world and to 
admit any person or persons to share in the prod- 
uct who had either no share or a very dispropor- 



20 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

tionate share in the labour that produced it, we have 
introduced two principles that are mathematically 
opposed to each other. We have granted to two 
people a title to the same thing. One of those 
titles must give way. In point of fact every time 
a title to property is granted without self-effort on 
the part of the person who receives the property, 
that precise measure of reward must be taken away 
from those who are by labour entitled to it. This, I 
believe, will be made perfectly clear in the follow- 
ing chapter. 



CHAPTER VI 

HEIRS ARE SUPPORTED BY THEIR OWN GENERATION 

If we think clearly, nothing is more evident than 
that an heir is supported not by his father but by 
capitalists and labourers contemporaneous with 
himselfV who supply him from their own earnings 
and who have an incontestable right to withdraw 
that supply. 

To understand this thoroughly it is merely neces- 
sary to consider what man's chief physical wants 
are and how they are supplied. They are generally 
agreed upon as being food, clothing, shelter, and the 
luxuries of life. Let us consider each. 

As to food^ — the proposition that each genera- 
tion produces its own is well-nigh undebatable. 
Practically no food does or can remain in an edible 
state for over a year, to say nothing of a life-time. 
In cases when it can be preserved longer than a 
single year, as in the case of grains, the shrinkage 
of the food and the tying up of capital, render it 

1 See Henry George, Progress and, Poverty, Book I, Ch. IV, 
p. 74. 

21 



22 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

inadvisable to hoard it save as an emergency meas- 
ure in time of war or famine. 

After food has been prepared for nse, the situ- 
ation is even more extreme. Ordinary bread can 
hardly be preserved longer than a week. Fruits 
and meat, to be kept eatable even for a few days, 
must be carefully packed and specially treated. 
Even water stales if not kept in motion. And to 
cap the climax, after any food is cooked ( and cook- 
ing is an enormous factor in production, estimated 
in hours of labour of millions of cooks) it must be 
eaten ivithin a few minutes to be palatable. 

As to food, then, the fact that each generation 
produces its own is clear and unquestioned. 

As to clothing the situation is nearly as extreme. 
The destruction of clothing by time itself makes a 
ten-year-old garment of little service unless it has 
been packed and preserved with care, while chang- 
ing styles and conditions render the use of old 
clothing as socially undesirable, as years of non- 
use make it an economic waste, by the tying up of 
capital. Modern economies have made it neces- 
sary for clothing to be sold generally within a year 
of its manufacture, and the merchant who carries 
old-style clothing in stock seldom remains in busi- 
ness long enough to become a very significant factor 
therein. 



HEIRS ARE SUPPORTED 23 

So as to clothing it is also evident that the dead 
parent does not provide it. 

As to houses and store buildings the situation is 
not so extreme. While the average life of a build- 
ing is said to be less than twenty-five years, due to 
fire, weather damage and the changing needs and 
styles of a community, there are many houses that 
endure for a much longer time, and some public 
buildings that stand for ages. Yet even in such 
cases, the repair of the building during the long 
years of its existence entails a much greater cost 
than its original erection ; and the labour expended 
upon caring for it daily to make it serviceable can 
hardly be estimated. This labour must always be 
performed by living hands; and there is no more 
certain evidence of this, if evidence were needed, 
than the fact that when these ministrations are 
said to be performed by the voiceless dead to whom 
heirs look for their titles, the very heirs themselves 
are the first who are inspired by fear to desert the 
haunted house. The far greater part of the labour 
connected with the shelter of each generation must 
be performed by it. 

So also with the tools of industry and the con- 
veniences and luxuries of life. A generation or 
less sees their destruction through corrosion and 
decay if not through use or the rapidly changing 



24 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

conditions brought about by invention. Each gen- 
eration is called upon to provide its own imple- 
ments of labour and conveniences of luxury and to 
do the work necessary to keep them in condition 
for use. 

Reduced to its last analysis, the theory that a 
son is supported by his dead father or grandfather 
becomes the most senseless and feeble of claims.^ 

1 Louie F. Post, Asst. Secretary of Labour and well-known 
political economist, in The Public, New York, August 10, 1917: 

" Nobody can any longer doubt that mankind lives from hand 
to mouth. Never again will any but impostors assert nor any 
but easy dupes believe, that men may live upon accumulations of 
the past. The war has made it clear that none lives otherwise 
than by the work of his time. It follows that no one can be rich 
enough to live without working unless he lives at the expense 
of the work of other living men. Is it, then, unreasonable to 
predict that hereafter he who does not earn his own living, be 
It that of a beggar or that of a millionaire, will be spotted for 
an industrial parasite? Who can long be dull enough to doubt 
that any one's living, if he does not earn it himself, is being 
earned for him? Not lias been earned for him by industrious 
and despoiled contemporaries. 

Ancestors leave no accumulations of life's necessaries worth 
considering in connection with the problem of living without 
working. Houses that last for a little time, jewels for a longer 
time, machinery for a shorter time — these they may leave. 
But even the most enduring necessaries and luxuries of life are 
soon gone. Before they are worn out, the heir must part with 
them in exchange for food unless his ancestor from whom he 
inherits them has left him also some magic recipe for com- 
mandeering food without earning it. 

For food is not enduring. Most of it is needed for consump- 
tion as fast as it is produced. This is virtually true of all 



HEIRS ARE SUPPORTED 25 

The only benefits that one generation can leave to 
another (outside of public improvements, build- 
ings, roads, etc., upon which each generation must 
do its share) are the examples of right living, re- 
forms in civilization, inventions in mechanical sci- 
ence, and in general benefits of an intellectual or 
spiritual nature, the details of which are preserved 
in tradition and in books. 

A certain absurdity in the claim of the right of 
heirs to property because of the services of their 
fathers, becomes apparent when we consider the 
nature of the real benefits that are handed down 
from generation to generation. If any sons should 
be considered entitled to immunity from labour on 
account of their fathers' service, it would seem 
reasonable to believe that these should be the sons 
of inventors, scientists, writers, libertarians and 
scientific and moral reformers. Yet the children 
of these great men have been utterly neglected by 
posterity — for who has yet had the audacity to 

necessaries, but of food it is literally true. As "an army 
moves upon its belly," so do the nations. All their people must 
be fed with food produced as they go. Today's production is 
virtually, almost literally, today's only supply for consumption. 
It is a natural law. There is no such thing as accumulation 
in any comprehensive sense. Work, productive work, contin- 
uously productive work, is the price that Nature exacts of man- 
kind, alike for living and for killing. Pay as you go, and pay 
in work! This is Nature's unalterable rule. 



26 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

propose that we shonld excuse from honourable toil 
the heirs of Robert Morris, or Abraham Lincoln 
or Henry George, because of the greatness of their 
fathers? How did it fare of olden times with the 
heirs of Martin Luther in Germany, Shakespeare 
in England and Galileo in Italy? And how much 
by way of inheritance did the world bestow upon 
the sisters of Jesus, the nieces of Columbus or the 
grandchildren of Robert Fulton? 

Instead of such reward our histories record with 
a bleak monotony of repetition the transfer of the 
fortunes of accumulators, speculators and thieves. 
William of Normandy, who by the rule of legiti- 
macy was himself barred from inheritance, founded 
with his sword a dynasty of money-kings that im- 
poverished Britain. The Duke of Westminster, 
whose father was certainly not a great civilizing or 
educational factor in the life of England, owns by 
mere inheritance a big proportion of London. The 
heirs of that grand old railroad-wrecker Jay Gould, 
have more power today than the King of England ; 
while a goodly number of the Vanderbilts and 
Astors reward the generation that supports them 
at its own expense, by taking the majority of their 
New York drafts to London. 

The theory that the services of the father create 
a just title for the heir certainly fails of demon- 



HEIRS ARE SUPPORTED 27 

stration when the services of fathers are measured 
in any terms but those of money ; and when meas- 
ured in terms of money the theory that the parent 
supports the child falls to the ground. We are led 
by logic to the unavoidable conclusion that idlers 
are always supported by the generation in which 
they live, at the heavy cost of poverty and ignorance 
to the workers, with disease and helplessness as the 
perpetual lot of unfavoured children who must con- 
tinue to carry the heavy burden of privilege upon 
their backs. 



CHAPTER VH 

INHERITANCE A PRIVILEGE, NOT A RIGHT 

It is necessary here as a last " preliminary consid- 
eration " to draw a clear distinction between la- 
bour, industrial capital and privilege. 

Labour is the name given to all productive effort 
whether of hand or brain. 

Industrial capital is the stored-up product of 
labour which is used to assist new labour. It con- 
sists mainly of machines, buildings, improvements 
and money. 

Privilege is the permission to secure capital 
either without labour at all, or without adequate 
labour. It involves investment without regard to 
industry, or with but little regard to it. It con- 
sists almost entirely of a legal franchise to do 
something which others must refrain from doing, 
to own something that others must refrain from 
owning, or to secure something without rendering 
any service at all. 

The forms of privilege are almost innumerable, 
but a few illustrations will suffice to show what 

28 



INHERITANCE A PRIVILEGE 29 

privilege is. A franchise to supply gas, electricity 
or street car conveniences for a city is a privilege, 
— a monopoly granted by the Government. The 
right to own an oil-well or a mine to be held idle 
is a privilege. The powder to own land not in use, 
holding it for a rise in price, is a privilege, gen- 
erally known by the term " speculation." The 
powder to inherit a sum of money is a privilege. In 
short, every method of securing profits through a 
monopoly or speculation or by doing nothing at all, 
is a privilege. 

It is impossible to separate labour from industrial 
capital. Their objects are the same, and the re- 
sult of their co-operation is mutually beneficial. 
Broadly speaking an injury to one is an injury to 
the other, and privilege is the enemy of both. 

Privilege is very insidious. It arises nearly al- 
ways from the supposition that some reward is 
necessary in a proposed enterprise beyond the or- 
dinary rewards of industry, — some special favour 
to induce the investment of funds in the under- 
taking; and the form of favour usually granted is 
monopoly. 

It must be borne in mind that privileges are 
rarely one hundred per cent favours. There is 
usually a certain per cent of service demanded for 
the privilege granted, though often, through cor- 



30 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

rupt legislatures and other law-making bodies, 
these privileges of government have been sold for 
a mess of pottage. This per cent of service, too, 
is usually larger at first than in the later years 
when the corporation so favoured has forgotten its 
obligations of service and remembers only its mo- 
nopolistic grants ; ^ so that the tendency of all 
government privileges is to become more oppressive 
as the years go by than was intended at the time 
of their first granting. 

But while, in most cases, some service is de- 
manded by the government in return for privilege, 
there is one privilege that may be described as an 
" hundred per cent '' privilege because nothing at 
all is done or attempted to be done in exchange by 
the person receiving it. This is the privilege of 
inheritance ; and my purpose in defining labour, in- 
dustrial capital and privilege, has been to enable 
the reader at this point to properly classify an in- 
herited fortune as a privilege distinct from and 
opposed to earned capital. 

1 An interesting illustration is that of the Western Pacific 
Railroad grant in California in the " good old days " of rail- 
road land grants. Ten alternate sections on each side per mile, 
or 12,800 acres for each mile of road to be built, was granted. 
The original grantee sold the franchise minus the land grant 
and kept the land liimself! The history of the United States 
has been filled to overflowing with similar incidents in connec- 
tion with all sorts of federal, state and municipal franchises. 



INHERITANCE A PRIVILEGE 31 

With this in mind let us examine the claims put 
forward by the defenders of this privilege of in- 
heritance: first, the claim that a father has the 
right to decree hy will that his son shall have prop- 
erty that the son did not earn; second, the claim 
that the son has a right to receive it; and, third, 
the claim that such a transfer of property without 
service upon the part of the beneficiary is for the 
public good. 



PART II 

INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM THE 
STANDPOINT OF HUMAN RIGHTS 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE RIGHT OF THE DEAD TO GIVE 

If our system of inheritance is founded upon 
justice, it must be sliown that the father who leaves 
an estate to his son^ has a right to so dispose of 
his property, that the son has a right so to receive 
it, and that the transfer injures no third person. 

1 In my entire argument I have used the case of father and 
son for illustration because I wish to present the issue in its 
strongest light, from the viewpoint of the defenders of the in- 
heritance privilege, discussing the questi»)n of direct rather 
than collateral inheritances. (" By direct inheritance is meant 
usually property passing to a father, mother, husband, wife, 
child [including adopted child] and lineal descendant. Some 
states include brothers and sisters and also the wife of a son 
and husband of a daughter. By a collateral inheritance is 
meant property passing to other more distant relatives or to 
strangers" — Bancroft.) Collateral inheritances are taxed 
more heavily than direct inheritances under nearly all govern- 
ments, and soon destined to final extinction. To this form of 
inheritance nearly all distinguished economists have been op- 
posed, whether they opposed direct inheritance or not. The list 
includes Bentham, Mill, Bluntschli, Enfantin, Max West and 
R. T. Ely, the last-named stating the argument as follows: 
{Outlines of Economics, p. 303.) 

" Why should collateral inheritance apart from a will be 
allowed at all except among near relatives? Why should third 
cousins inherit from one another at all unless money is left by 
will? Are third cousins nearer to one than the town or city 

35 



36 THE ABOLITION OF INHEKITANCE 

First; as to the father — (and this must include 
both parents, since man and wife are jointly cre- 
ators of the family wealth and no will should be 
necessary to fully secure to the wife at least those 
property rights in her husband's estate that she now 
possesses ) — there are two distinct kinds of estates 
that must be considered if we are to judge correctly 
the right of a father to bequeath an inheritance. 
They are : 

1. Estates founded upon money secured through 
privilege. 

2. Estates founded upon money earned. 

With respect to the first, estates founded on 
privilege, it ought to be perfectly evident that the 
founder of such an estate, having no title in justice 
to his wealth, cannot pass on to an heir a better 
title than he himself possesses, and that even though 
his wealth was amassed under laws declared legal 
in his day, the discovery of their injustice by a later 
generation would fully justify society in refusing 

in which one has lived and where one has been able to acquire 
a fortune? The extent to which intestate collateral inheritance 
is carried is a survival of the sentiment of the time when 
people lived in clans, and is ridiculous in our day. Right and 
duty should be co-ordinated. Ought I to be compelled to sup- 
port an uncle who is unable by incapacity to earn a livelihood? 
Then I should inherit from him. . . . The modern clan is 
society, and to it belong all claims to inheritance falling outside 
the circle of vital relations." 



RIGHT OF DEAD TO GIVE 37 

to validate a will that would pass attainted prop- 
erty to an heir. 

With respect to the second, estates founded on 
money earned, the fact that society recognized the 
right of the founder of the estate to the full reward 
of his labour and guaranteed to him its peaceable 
possession, entails upon that society the necessity 
of granting a similar right to all other men. And 
since the granting of an estate to those who did 
not earn it robs the workers of the world of a part of 
the full product of labour, any argument in favour 
of inheritances because they w^ere honestly earned 
in the first place, becomes a strong, nay overwhelm- 
ing reason why all future estates also should go 
only to those who earn them. Thus such a plea 
for the privilege of inheritance not only falls of its 
own weight, but if rightly considered becomes the 
chief reason against the deeding of property by 
will. 

Each generation has the right to make its own 
laws, and ratify or reject laws already made, for 
it is the living, not the dead, whose interests are 
to be served, and whose rights are to be determined.^ 

1 CAN ONE GENERATION BIND ANOTHER? 

(Thomas Jefferson's letter to James Madison.) 

It was the custom of statesmen, in Jefferson's time, to em- 
body their opinions in letters to their associates. Even the 



38 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

When a man's life comes to an end, Ms wants, de- 
sires and powers cease at the same time. Having 
no longer any rights to be defended or wants to be 
supplied, he has no longer any authority in the 
world's affairs. 

democratic and daring Jefferson feared to announce in public 
his fundamental ideas upon the rights of man lest they should 
be misunderstood. This letter from Jefferson to Madison, his 
successor in the Presidency, was written in the first year of 
Washington's first administration and is one of the most re- 
markable of these quasi-public letters written by Jefferson dur- 
ing the early period of American Independence. 

" Paeis, September 6, 1789. 

..." The question whether one generation of men has a 
right to bind another, seems never to have been started either 
on this or our side of the Vv^ater. Yet it is a question of such 
consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also among 
the fundamental principles of every government. The course 
of reflection in which we are immersed here, on the elementary 
principle of society, has presented this question to my mind ; 
and that no such obligation can be so transmitted, I think very 
capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to 
be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living ; 
that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. Tbe por- 
tion occupied by any individual ceases to be his when himself 
ceases to be, and reverts to the society. . . . This principle that 
the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead is of very 
extensive application and consequence in every country." 

The topic of inheritance was a favourite with Thomas Jeffer- 
son. The mind that conceived and the hand that penned the 
Declaration of Independence belonged to a man whose soul and 
talents were dedicated unalterably to the great fundamentals 
of human liberty. 

The following quotation from his writings leaves no doubt as 



RIGHT OF DEAD TO GIVE 39 

No parent has authority to bind or control the 
acts of his sou past the age of twenty-one, even 
when living. How then has he the right to bind 
or control the acts of an entire generation toward 
that son? If he cannot bind the son to acts of 
goodness and mercy, if he cannot control his son's 
financial management of the property left to him, 
npon what real right can he bind the world to 

to the position of tbe great democrat upon the question of the 
control of one generation by another : 

" That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living 
and not of the dead ; that those who exist not can have no use 
nor rights in it ; no authority or power over it ; that one gen- 
eration of men cannot foreclose or burden its use to another, 
which comes to it in their own right, and by the same Divine 
beneficence ; that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeed- 
ing one by its laws or contracts, these deriving their obligation 
from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being 
removed by death, another comes in its place with a will 
equally free to make its own laws and contracts — these are 
axioms so self-evident that no explanations can make them 
plainer ; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non- 
existence can control existence or that nothing can move some- 
thing. They are axioms, also, pregnant with salutary conse- 
quences. The laws of civil society, indeed, for the encourage- 
ment of industry, give the property of the parent to his family 
on his death, and in most civilized countries permit him to give 
it by testament to whom he pleases. And it is also found more 
convenient to suffer the laws to stand on our implied assent as 
if positively re-enacted, until the existing majority repeals 
them ; but this does not lessen the right of that majority to re- 
peal whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it. 
Habit alone confounds civil practice with natural rights." 

Thomas Jefferson. 



40 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

recognize the authority of his son? If he cannot 
command his son to contribute in labour toward 
the world's support, upon what theory of justice 
may he require the world to feed, clothe and shelter 
his son ? Make no mistake here — the father who is 
dead is not supporting the son. The son is being 
supported entirely by his owm living fellow-citizens. 
The father merely earned support of himself, and 
wrongly secured the legal authority to command 
the coming generation to support the son. It is 
of importance here to realize that the will written 
by the father is entirely a one-sided document, com- 
manding that the son be supported, yet powerless 
to command the son to pay in service for his sup- 
port. 

The dead parent gives a command that unborn 
millions of children must obey; yet the dead man 
and the unborn children of the next generation 
have not had and will not have any point of per- 
sonal contact. What possible obligation can rest 
upon the unborn child to support the son of the 
man w^ho departed from the world before he came 
into it? What principle of equity can be produced 
whereby one spirit passed away can hold in fealty 
other spirits not yet flung into the world from the 
hand of the Creator? 

If the wealthy father has a natural right to de- 



RIGHT OF DEAD TO GIVE 41 

clare that his son shall be supported at the public 
charge, why cannot the son of an indigent father 
be required to pay his father's debts? In the latter 
case we recognize that such an obligation placed 
upon a son would be unfair. Is it not clear that 
the inheritance of a fortune is as unfair to the 
public as the inheritance of debts would be unfair 
to the son? 

No more absurd and unreasonable situation can 
be presented than the generally accepted rule that 
men who have passed beyond the tomb, having no 
present relation to the living world, must be obeyed 
because they wrote on a piece of paper, the rules 
to govern the unborn. And when to this we add 
the consideration that we only obey those privi- 
lege-creating rules regarding money that are written 
into wills, and reserve the right to utterly neglect 
the moral counsels that the parents may have given 
while alive, the absurdity becomes criminal, the 
injustice too grievous to be borne. 

A government of the people, by the people and 
for the people can be possible only when it is con- 
ducted by those geographically and physically 
present. Government should be for those who live 
under it. It refers to the problems that effect the 
living, and only the living have a natural right to 
conduct it. The assertion that the will of the dead 



42 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

must be obeyed is merely the effort of the favoured 
class to call tradition and superstition to the aid of 
privilege, and is an insult to the memory of that 
much larger number of ancestors who loved justice. 

If we are to obey the will of our ancestors, let 
us consider not merely a few, but all of them. It 
is the uniform folly of those who base their defence 
of large inheritances upon the rights of ancestors, 
that they select only a certain class of ancestors 
upon whom this power is conferred. They do not 
include them all. They include only a small num- 
ber, most of whom were themselves heirs. They 
do not even include men selected for their wisdom, 
scientific knowledge, honesty or other special quali- 
fications that might fit them to administer such a 
trust wisely. 

The power to name heirs is conferred only upon 
the wealthy. The mass of ancestors is ignored. 
The millions of our forefathers who fought, bled 
and died to free this nation and to preserve it, are 
not invoked as authority by the advocate of sw^ollen 
inheritances. Their sanctity as ancestors is as 
rudely ignored as their rights as men would be if 
they were living today. 

Make no mistake. The appeal to the sentiment 
of respect for ancestors as authority for the priv- 
ilege of inheritance is as hypocritical as it is il- 



EIGHT OF DEAD TO GIVE 43 

logical. It is an appeal for some ancestors as 
against all ancestors. It is the appeal of aristoc- 
racy, opposing democracy. 

If we are to apportion the earth's blessings ac- 
cording to the wishes of our forefathers, let ns 
include them all, and we shall come out right, for 
then we shall come to see that the Father of All is 
God Himself ^ and that we are all of one ancestry, 
the intermediate stages of descent modifying our 
natural talents but not our natural rights. Just as 
we today condemn the presumptuous son who en- 
deavours to break the will of his father in order 
to obtain a larger share of the family wealth, so 
we should condemn him who attempts to break the 
will of the Divine Father of All, who gave the 
earth to all mankind for an inheritance. 

But our inheritance laws go much farther than 
to merely compel obedience to the will of the dead. 
They have created in the minds of heirs the feeling 
that they, as heirSy are entitled to money even when 
it was the desire of the deceased that they should 
not receive it; and such is the arrogance of this 
class of people that in thousands of instances the 
most impudent efforts are made by them to break 
the will of the testator and force a recognition of 
their claims to the inheritance of unearned money. 

1 Malachi ii, 10. 



44 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

And often in these cases the most vile reflections 
are cast upon the memory of those whose money 
has become the object of the disgraceful contest. 

If the people of a past generation, or of all past 
generations, were disposed to permit these in- 
equalities of the cradle that come with inheritances, 
that does not and cannot lessen the right of this 
generation to be free of them. The denial of the 
property rights of others that is made whenever 
an heir is granted, without labour, a part of the 
property control of the world, enforces a degree 
of slavery upon the rest of the world in proportion 
to the size of the estate inherited; and when any 
document, signed by no matter how many testators, 
witnesses and notaries public, solemnly consigns 
a fortune worth as much as a kingdom to the sole 
ownership of an infant, it speaks a language that 
would merit no further reply than Homeric laugh- 
ter, did not the human slavery that it represents 
bring such a clutching misery into the hearts of 
the thousands who must toil terribly for enough 
bread to live, while they are being stripped of that 
share of their earnings that the non-producer by 
this arrangement must necessarily receive. 

Look at it from whatever angle you will, heredi- 
tary succession to the power of money is more than 
an absurdity. It is a crime against all posterity. 



RIGHT OF DEAD TO GIVE 45 

A man dead, who cannot so much as lift a verbal 
protest against the iniquities of an heir, who has 
no power to regulate any of his moral delinquen- 
cies, whose control has been taken utterly away 
from every detail of the heirs conduct, is yet pointed 
to as the source from w^hich this beneficiary derives 
the mastery of a thousand human lives! An au- 
thority granted by the powerless ! A right derived 
from one who cannot enforce a duty! A living 
power established by the tomb ! 



CHAPTEK IX 

THE RIGHT OF HEIRS TO RECEIVE 

SiNCE^ then, it is true that the living can gather no 
real authority from the dead, the claim to an in- 
heritance must arise from some other source. 
Naturally there are only four physical factors to 
the transaction, — the dead person, the heir, the 
document known as a will, and the living people 
who consent thereto. 

Having examined and disproved the theory that 
the dead person has a right to control the living, 
let us next examine the claims of the heir. 

Before considering such of these claims as are 
based upon argument, I wish first to turn your at- 
tention to a most powerful influence or claim of 
the heir that is founded upon the sentiment of 
family superiority — the feeling that one's family 
is better than other families. There are many who 
have this feeling, just as a man naturally considers 
himself superior to a horse, or a white man feels 
himself superior to a negro or an Indian. 

So far as this feeling applies to respect for one's 

46 



RIGHT OF HEIRS TO RECEIVE 47 

ancestors and hope for the success of his posterity, 
it is a worthy feeling; but a clear distinction must 
be drawn between a wholesome emulation between 
families in the attainment of mental and moral 
superiority to others, and the evil wish to use one's 
family as a means for the attainment of selfish and 
unjust ends. Just as Abraham Lincoln said of the 
negro,^ " I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not 
my equal in many respects — certainly not in colour, 
perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. 
But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave 
of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is 
my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the 
equal of every living man," so I may say of a person 
I consider to be of inferior family " He may not be 
my social equal, perhaps not my mental equal ; but 
in his right to all the produce of his labour, he is 
the equal of any man living; and I have no right 
to any special privilege of receiving money with- 
out earning ity for thus I deprive him of a part of 
what is his/' 

Passing, then, from the consideration of family 
superiority as a basis for economic privileges, let 
us consider such claims of the heir as take the form 
of logical argument. 

To him who claims the right to an estate because 

1 See Lincoln-Douglas debates. 



48 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

his father earned it, I have this to reply : The fact 
that my father earned a vast sum of money simply 
entitled me to have a father who earned a vast sum 
of money. There is nothing further in that coin- 
cidence so far as my natural right to money is con- 
cerned. There is no reason given in that statement 
for my receiving what / have not earned. The 
statement that a man is entitled to money because 
his father earned it is a non sequitur. It is a mere 
statement, containing nothing whatever of reason 
or argument. Reduced to its lowest terms it is 
equivalent to saying ^^ A is entitled to money be- 
cause B earned it." ^ 

The fact that the father earned it merely proves 
that the father was entitled to it. It contains no 
shred of argument to show that the son is entitled 
to anything. In fact, to the extent that it proves 
that some other person earned it, it shows conclu- 
sively that the son is not entitled to it. 

If the privilege of an inheritance were one to 
which the son is entitled by inalienable natural 

1 " Property rights cannot justly be based upon con- 
sanguinity, and blood connection confers no merits upon a 
claimant ; for so far as his own efforts are concerned con- 
sanguinity is purely an accident. To give any man wealth 
merely because his father was wealthy is no more just than 
to hang another son because his paternal ancestor was a mur- 
derer or to imprison him because the latter was a thief." 
George Richardson, King Mammon, p. 132. 



RIGHT OF HEIRS TO RECEIVE 49 

right, it would be necessary to go much farther than 
merely to grant the father s right to transfer his 
estate to his son. It would be obligatory upon 
mankind to jjass laws compelling a testator to so 
dispose of his property. In the case of a widow we 
very properly grant to her certain dower rights, 
since the widow must be considered her husband's 
partner and jointly with him the creator of the 
family estate. We should grant to her at least 
those property rights to her husband's estate that 
she now possesses; our action in granting a cer- 
tain minimum with or without her husband's con- 
sent is a recognition of her natural right thereto; 
and this same reasoning applies to children in the 
helpless state of their minority. But we make no 
such compulsory provisions for any child except 
in his minority. The father may " cast him off " 
if he desires, and in permitting this the law clearly 
shows that it does not consider the privilege of in- 
heritance as based upon or proceeding from any 
inalienable right of the heir. 

The answer is immediately urged, however, that 
the father, being entitled to it himself, has a right 
to give it to whomsoever he pleases, and that the 
right of one to give implies the right of another to 
receive.^ 

1 For legal decisions disproving this assumption see State vs. 



50 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

I deny the right of a man to give anything that 
he pleases to any person whom he chooses. No 
sentiment is more tender than the affection that 
inspires the giving of gifts of remembrance. The 
heart warms and the soul responds to the giver of 
such gifts. It is in imitation of the Giver of all 
things good that the lover of mankind gives of him- 
self to all; and the most tender expression of in- 
dividual affection is the giving of a gift that has 
cost effort and thought, by one who loves to one 
who is beloved. But there must be a rule of reason 
and justice in this as in all other human actions. 
Where the gift works an injury upon the com- 
munity, the people have a right to forbid it. 

The legality of governmental restrictions upon 
gifts has always been recognized and is recognized 
today in many particulars. One may not give 
money to a criminal for the purpose of assisting 
him in crime. He may not furnish money or sup- 
plies to any enemy of his country. He may not 
legally give money to a drunkard to purchase liquor, 
nor pay the railroad fare of a woman to aid in an im- 
moral purpose. He may not give money for po- 
litical uses, beyond a certain reasonable amount. 
He may not furnish weapons to the insane, nor sell 

Ferris. 58 Obio St. 314, 41 N. E. 579, and other cases cited In 
appendix. 



EIGHT OP HEIRS TO RECEIVE 51 

poison to one who desires to use it to commit crime 
or suicide. Hundreds of similar cases might be 
cited. There are today a large number of limita- 
tions upon the right of the possessor of wealth to 
give it away, and these limitations gather around 
the general principle that no gift may be made, the 
result of w^hich is an injury to the public good. 

In the case of large inheritances the injury to 
labour and earned capital is too grievous to be 
borne. Sorrow, poverty and crime, stalk at the 
footsteps of the heir to unearned millions, and the 
disinheriting of the rest of the world is not the 
accidental but the inevitable consequence. Low 
wages, high prices and hunger-enforced prostitu- 
tion are necessarily increased in the proportion that 
unearned inheritances bear to the total of the 
world's wealth. The evil of inherited millions is 
too terrible for the subject to be laid aside by a 
mere declaration that a man has the right to give 
w^hat he pleases to whom he pleases. 

Nor is the situation changed one whit by the 
statement that to forbid the gift of fortunes by will 
necessarily involves the prohibition of the gift of 
fortunes before death. This statement is not neces- 
sarily true, for it is reasonable to suppose that 
if inheritances were forbidden, the holders and 
earners of fortunes would not give away before 



52 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

their death any larger sums than would be wisely 
used by the recipients. But, if we grant that the 
withdrawal of the privilege of inheritance would 
require the forbidding of dangerous gifts before 
death, then the reasoning that supports the denial 
of the former upholds also the denial of the latter. 
The world is coming grandly into the recognition 
of certain social truths, and of these there are none 
of as great economic importance as the fundamental 
underlying principle that every man has a natural 
and inalienable right to the full product of his toil. 
Any privilege, whether of monopoly or gift, that 
interferes with the fair operation of this principle, 
is wrong morally, and should be destroyed. The 
entire course of the modern development of law 
seems to indicate the attempt to limit the evil of 
inheritance by denying the principle of free and 
unrestricted giving. The laws of the United States 
(and of most other countries as well) forbid pri- 
mogeniture and entail. That is, they discourage 
the custom of retaining vast estates in the hands 
of the eldest son, and forbid the tying up of estates 
longer than a period of twenty-one years after the 
death of the last living beneficiary. Civilization 
has accomplished this much in the right direction, 
and the very air is electric today with the thought 



RIGHT OP HEIRS TO RECEIVE 53 

that we should now go a step farther and prohibit 
the privilege of inheritance altogether. 

If no injury to the rights of others were involved 
in the descent of estates, such descent could not 
always imply a right to receive even when the acts 
of receiving and giving took place at the same time; 
but surely the right to give can never imply the 
right to receive when the two acts take place under 
different circumstances and relations. For what 
might have been wise before the testator died (but 
what, incidentally, he refused then to do), might 
prove unwise after his death. 

The advocates of this theory, I think, should be 
called upon to prove the right to receive which 
they declare is implied in the right to give. As 
beneficiaries of reward without labour it is not 
sufficient for them to infer what they ought to be 
required to prove. And there is no basis of justice 
or desert upon which they can establish such a 
proof. They hold their privilege of inheritance by 
sufferance only — and when that sufferance or per- 
mission is withdrawn it will at once be seen that 
there remains no natural right upon which their 
claim may be founded. 



CHAPTEK X 

BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT TO PROPERTY 

The statement is made that the heir did not come 
into the world of his own choice and has therefore 
the right to expect his parents who were respon- 
sible for his existence to provide funds for his 
care. If this is true of the heir to a fortune it is 
also true of all the rest of the children born into 
the world. The theory of the divine right of heirs 
must therefore rest upon some other argument, — 
upon some claim not equally true of all human 
beings. 

The claim that the son, during the life of his 
parents, has been raised to expect luxury and should 
therefore not be deprived of that expectation, would 
not merit reply save that it is so commonly made. 

The plain and short answer to this claim is that 
under a proper social organization, men will not 
expect inheritance they have not earned,^ and that 

1 This proposition is cleverly stated as to collateral heirs by 
the profound Jeremy Bentham and applies with equal logic to 
direct heirs : 

" The heir would suffer no hardship, for hardship depends on 

54 



BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT 55 

when claims to property are based upon that ex- 
pectation, the removal of the expectation will neces- 
sarily destroy the basis of the claim. Under mon- 
archies, princes expect to accede to their father's 
power; but no son of a president of a republic ex- 
pects to inherit his fathers position, or feels abused 
because the idea of granting it to him is not thought 
of. Under a just law as to inheritances, no parent 
would repeat the error of raising his son to an- 
ticipate luxury, but would give him instead an 
education and training to enable him to fight the 
battle of life. The existence of the v/ealthy young 
snob raised to expect his accession to his father's 
power is one of the serious mistakes of modern so- 
ciety, as the Harry Thaws of today clearly demon- 
strate. 

Of a similar kind is the argument that the son of 
a millionaire really requires finer nourishment 

disapxjointment ; disappointment on expectation, and if tlie law 
of succession leaves hiim nothing, he will not expect anything." 
Again, " Suffer a mass of property, in whicli a man has no 
interest to get into his hands, his expectation, his imagination, 
his attention at least fastens upon the whole. Take from him 
afterward a part . . . the parting with it cannot but excite 
something of the sensation of a loss . . . Take from him now 
(I should not say take) but keep from him the whole, so keep- 
ing it from him that there shall never have been a time when 
he expected to receive it; all hardship, all suffering is out of 
the case." 



56 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

than does the son of the Hungarian, Polish or Rus- 
sian labourer. This is only partially true, and 
under a just inheritance law need never be true; 
for if the power to inherit were destroyed, a father 
would raise his children to work, and to live upon 
wholesome food, of which there would be plenty 
for all. The education of the rich would be for 
service, and the son, instead of inheriting his 
father's money, would be more likely than he is to- 
day to inherit his ability. 

The argument, or excuse, that an heir, if incapa- 
ble, will soon lose his fortune, and that the evil of 
inheritance is therefore not greatly to be feared, 
is an evasion, of the most false and dangerous 
character. As an argument it merits no reply save 
the dignified silence of contempt, but as an appeal 
to a fancied security from the dangers of vast 
estates, where no such security exists, it demands 
the most vigorous and emphatic denial. 

To secure a fortune not based on any privilege 
requires the exercise of great intelligence and in- 
dustry; but the preservation of that fortune re- 
quires very little. In these days of government 
bonds and other high-class securities absolutely 
safe in their character, it is not necessary to have 
a great amount of ability to preserve a large for- 
tune once accumulated, or even to increase it. 



BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT 57 

To tell a child who sees other children thus pre- 
sented with the stored-up capital of the world, that 
he is free and equal with them, is the height of 
satire. It is like placing him in a desert and telling 
him he is free to eat. It is like dropping him in 
the Atlantic Ocean and telling him he is free to 
walk ashore. The only freedom he has is in his 
opportunity to learn through poverty how to fight 
for wealth; and in this struggle he is constantly 
under the disadvantage of laws made in favour of 
those who already have the wealth he is seeking 
to obtain; and those favoured persons, unable to 
defend their own cause, hire others to conduct 
their defence against him — indeed, are constantly 
endeavouring by fair promises and the lure of pres- 
ent ease, to hire hi7n! 

Fortunes being hereditary and brains frequently 
not so, means are constantly being devised to make 
estates " fool-proof "— to preserve family fortunes 
even against the utmost incapacity of heirs; and 
where a parent perceives his son to be of small in- 
telligence, he specifies in his will the means that 
must be used to preserve the money for him. Thus 
a son not even able to keep that which is given to 
him, is cared for by trustees and trust companies. 

Any student of history will at once recognize 
the fact that these are precisely the same measures 



58 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

that have been used for hundreds of years to pro- 
tect the Crown in monarchical countries. Where 
a ^^ prince " has been too young to govern, and some- 
times even yet unborn, but expected, a regency has 
been established, to guard for him his " sacred 
right " until he has become of age. Even in cases 
of insanity or complete idiocy, the fiction of the 
prince's authority has been preserved by its dele- 
gation to one with no greater natural right to it 
than the incompetent son himself had. And in 
these cases, as in the case of the heirs of fortunes 
today, the administration of the trust has been a 
source of easy gains to those who assist in it, men 
and organizations willing to perpetuate a wrong 
because of the profits they secure thereby. 

The natural right to a fortune can only be based 
upon one proposition — that the title to it must 
arise from the labour of the person receiving it. 
Yet there are so many who urge that the heir has 
a right to it because of the necessity of preserving 
the unity and efficiency of existing business organi- 
zations, that I am inclined to consider this for a 
moment. 

First, if it were true that the accession of the 
proprietor's son to his father's place and power 
would help preserve a great business, this fact 
would prove not the natural rnght of the son to the 



BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT 59 

position, but the advantage to the people of having 
him occupy it; so that as an argument in favour 
of the son's natural rights it falls at once to the 
ground. As a matter of fact, however, the son does 
not so often preserve the usefulness of a large 
organization as destroy it. So notoriously true is 
this that we have evolved a saying which is false 
in fact but universally accepted as a description 
of the capabilities of heirs, that it is but " three 
generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.'^ 
The modern business man who desires to preserve 
his business even during his lifetime has devised 
the corporation, a form of organization least cal- 
culated to suffer by the loss of any one person in 
it. The son of the successful business man is so 
seldom his father's equal that his failure has be- 
come a byword among men ; and a form of organiza- 
tion whereby the new^ manager would be chosen 
upon merit rather than by birth would of necessity 
obtain for business establishments a security now 
altogether lacking. 

It was, and is, a favourite argument for mon- 
archial forms of government, that the stability and 
security of government is promoted by the acces- 
sion of the son to his father's powder, and that the 
people ought therefore to prefer peace with slavery 
to the hardships of the attainment of liberty 



60 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

through revolution. But wherever the chains of 
royal slavery have been cast off by a freedom-lov- 
ing people the blessings of self-government have 
been shown to be of greater worth than the security 
that is said to come with bondage; for a fettered 
security is never more than temporary, while the 
blessings of freedom are eternal. 

Even in cases where the son is capable, honest 
and industrious, no natural right to the privilege 
of inheritance attaches to him thereby ; for, if capa- 
bility, honesty and industry were the factors of 
an inalienable right to inheritance, the heirs of the 
world would be an entirely different set of people 
than those who are now so favoured, and the evil 
of inheritance would not have become so terrible as 
to demand the adjustment that is today beginning 
to take place. It has never been conceded, even 
by our most liberal exponents of inheritance priv- 
ileges, that the most honourable, or virtuous, or 
self-sacrificing of our citizens should be rewarded 
by inheritances. The discoverers of new worlds, 
the prophets of new religious and economic ideas, 
and the revolutionists whose memory we honour 
today, were persecuted, hung, burned and cruci- 
fied ; and their children were heirs not to fortunes, 
but to poverty and social ostracism. 

Neither virtue nor wisdom constitute an in- 



BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT 61 

alienable and natural right to money on the part 
of the person himself, to say nothing of his heirs. 
The only natural right to property that exists is 
the right of him who labours, to receive the full 
product of his toil. There is no decree from heaven 
or law of earth, that wisdom and virtue be coupled 
inseparably with hereditary accession to money 
power, and we ought to decline to show that favour 
and partiality to the wise and prudent that we deny 
to those who need it more. We ought to decline 
to distribute the bounties of earth to favoured per- 
sons, for God acted upon the opposite principle 
when He bestowed the blessings of seed-time and 
harvest upon all in proportion to their diligence 
and ability. When we see that the Creator appears 
to disown and disacknowledge the hereditary sys- 
tem by the kind of heirs with whose accession he 
has cursed it, there remains no shred of reason for 
the continuation of such an evil save the ignorance 
of those who suffer and the greed of those who are 
privileged. The moral character of the idle rich 
is below that of workers in all countries. One is 
insane, another degenerate, another a fool, and 
many a combination of all three, with idleness to 
increase their folly and heighten their degeneracy. 
This is not true of all, but it is certainly far more 
true of the idle rich, and the idle poor who are in- 



62 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

separably the result of them, than of the great mid- 
dle class of people. It is impossible to support 
our system of inheritances in the name of either 
reason or justice. Common sense rejects it and 
the conscience of every man alive is a crying wit- 
ness against it. 

Is it wise to make an estate hereditary that re- 
quires ability and judgment for its management? 
And if business management does require these 
qualities, is it not evident that by bestowing title 
without examination as to merit, we injure the 
general interests of mankind by our folly? 

Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon prop- 
erty. It represents it as a trust which any child, 
idiot or lunatic can fulfil whom nature has made 
the son of an accumulator. It requires some talent 
to be a brick-layer, a butler or a sewer inspector. 
Even membership in the sanitary brigade of a hotel 
or livery-stable requires that the candidate present 
some sort of evidence of ability to perform the 
labour for w^hich he or she is employed. But to 
be an heir requires no test of efficiency except a 
doctor's certificate of birth accompanied by a mar- 
riage license certifying legitimacy ; and to make it 
more absurd, even this requirement depends not 
upon the heir but upon his parents. 

In our common law of contracts we have this 



BASIS OF NATURAL RIGHT 63 

principle established : that any contract, to be valid, 
must contain a " sufficient consideration '' — that 
is that if one person is to receive property as a re- 
sult of the contract, it must be shown that he also 
gave a " consideration " — and a ^^ sufficient con- 
sideration '' — in return. This is recognized as be- 
ing just, because it conforms to the first rule of 
honest business, that a fair bargain must benefit 
both parties. 

In the case of an inheritance, however, we have 
an heir receiving without giving, a bargain that 
contains a benefit to only one party, an agreement 
between the heir and the community that the heir 
is to receive certain special benefits from which 
all the rest of mankind are excluded, without giving 
any valuable consideration whatever, to say noth- 
ing of a " sufficient '' consideration. 

And to make a bad matter worse, such is the con- 
struction of the human mind that this very favour, 
conferred by the community, has a tendency to 
make the heir a worse citizen than he would other- 
wise be, and to give him a station or position ex- 
alted above his fellow-men who support him. 

Moreover, in the making of ordinary civil con- 
tracts both parties are required to be " competent '' 
— that is to have the necessary legal qualifications 
as to age, sanity, freedom from penal servitude, 



64 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

etc. To suppose that any unborn heir can be a 
competent party to the contract whereby he re- 
ceives an estate, is to suppose him to have powers 
before he came into existence; and to suppose him 
capable at birth, like Jason's warriors springing 
from the dragon's teeth, is as great an absurdity 
as the myth it recalls, with less poetic and senti- 
mental excuse. 

The document called a will, therefore, not con- 
forming to the usual rules of fair exchange re- 
quired in civil contracts, has to fall back upon 
false sentiment and precedent for what little of 
argument or logic is presented in its support. How 
false this sentiment is, which favours one child at 
the terrible cost of a thousand, and how wicked the 
precedent that brings economic ruin upon a strug- 
jgling world, are subjects for later consideration; 
but for the present let us not lose sight of the im- 
portance of the main point just discussed, that the 
claim to an inheritance cannot be based upon any 
natural right of the heir, since the cause to be ad- 
judged lies between him and the other living people 
of his generation, his father being dead. 

There is only one basis of a natural right to 
property. That basis is the creation of the prop- 
erty in question. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 

The last will and testament of a man who is de- 
ceased is a unique document. It is the only docu- 
ment in the world that enables a man to dispose 
of property after his death which he was unwilling 
to dispose of during his life-time. It stands al- 
most alone as the means whereby the hand of the 
dead can rule the living world. 

With the exception of seven or eight years dur- 
ing the reign of Henry VIII in England, it has been 
for centuries a recognized instrument of perpetua- 
tion of power in the line of a family. Without it, 
power would have to be earned by merit, or at least 
by effort. With it, power is transferred v^dthout 
regard either to merit or to effort. 

This document gives to the heir the authority 
to enter upon and possess property that he did not 
earn, and perhaps has never seen. It gives him the 
legal privilege to consume without labour food that 
others are producing, and wear without labour 
clothing that others are making, to secure without 

65 



66 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

service in return, shelter, luxuiy and opportunity. 
Wills confer upon heirs as a class the value of the 
entire sum of capital that each generation passes 
on to the next.^ 

An inheritance is a privilege^ not an earned prop- 
erty, and the will by which it is transferred con- 
fers a legal power upon the heir to live without 
labour upon the prodiicts of others. 

To say that a will or any other document gives 
rights , is, to a certain extent, misleading. Human 
rights are natural and inherent in all human be- 
ings ; and all that any legal document can do is to 
certify and make plain to both the ignorant and 
the oppressor what those lights are conceived by 
the government to be.^ If the law corresponds with 

1 In the United States alone this sum is estimated at four 
billion eight hundred million dollars a year. See Preface, p. 
18, note 3. 

2 Blackstone, whose famous Commentaries are still recog- 
nized in England and America as a basic authority, is under 
no illusion as to the source of authority for the document 
known as a will. He says (Book II, Ch. 1, Sec. 2) : " There is 
nothing which so generally strikes the imagination and engages 
the affections of mankind as the right of property, or that 
sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises 
over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the 
rights of any other individual in the universe. And yet there 
are very few that will give themselves the trouble to consider 
the original foundation of this right. Pleased as we are with 
the possession, we seem afraid to look back to the means by 
which it was acquired, as if fearful of some defect in our title ; 



THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 67 

human rights, the document adds authority to nat- 
ural right and confirms it. If the law is wrong, 
as is often the case, the document gives authority 
and strength to error. Governments ought there- 
fore to be especially careful, when they issue such 
certificates, not to oppose the natural rights of the 
community of men by granting special privileges 
to any favoured class. 

If a will, devising a hundred million dollars to 
an heir who did not earn it, should state in terms 
what its clauses make inevitable, it would say, " I 
hereby instruct or decree that to the extent of one 
hundred million dollars the workers of the next 

or, at best, we rest satisfied with the decision of the laws in our 
favour without examAning the reason or authority upon which 
those laws have been built. We think it enough that our title 
is derived from the grant of the former proprietor, by descent 
from our ancestors, or by the last will and testament of the 
dying owner ; not caring to reflect that ( accurately and strictly 
speaking) there is no foundation in nature or in natural law 
why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion 
of land ; why the son should have the right to exclude his fel- 
low-creatures from a determinate spot of ground, because his 
father had done so before him ; or why the occupier of a par- 
ticular field or jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no 
longer able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell all 
the rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him. 
These inquiries, it must be owned, would be useless and even 
troublesome in common life. It is well if the mass of mankind 
will obey the laws when made, without scrutinizing too nicely 
the reason for making them." 



68 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

generation shall produce and not receive." That 
is precisely the effect that such a will has, and those 
who wince at it or try to avoid its unavoidable con- 
clusion, merely deceive themselves, or, worse, add 
hypocrisy to injustice by pretending to think what 
they do not. 

All charters, wills, deeds and franchises have a 
direct affirmative operation that includes and re- 
quires an equally direct negative operation. A li- 
cense to run a railroad, own a special lot, or receive 
an inheritance, is mainly valuable because it for- 
bids all other people in the world to use the railroad 
right of way, to occupy the lot, or to get an equal 
inheritance. Whenever the community receives a 
fair value for such monopolistic privilege, it is no 
doubt wise to grant it ; but w^hen such privileges are 
granted without a return to the generation grant- 
ing them, as in the case of an inheritance, the nega- 
tive operation of the grant is at once apparent. 
The conferring of wealth upon those who have not 
earned it, is a denial of the natural rights of all 
other living persons to the full reward of their toil ; 
for inheritances consist of property taken from the 
world's total product, leaving less for workers 
every time a part is given to a non-worker. 

The will, like many other injustices, calls super- 
stition to its aid and makes a bad use of religion. 



THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 69 

" In the name of God, amen I " was the old-fash- 
ioned verbiage at the beginning of this document, 
and still is often used. The deity is called upon to 
sanctify the acquisition of millions by a scape-grace 
heir. The name of God is invoked to justify and 
lend dignity to a robbery of the workers of the 
coming generation. " In the name of God, so be 
it!" is a phrase that calls upon the Maker of the 
world to support a profanation of His Divine plan 
to shower the resources of beneficent nature upon 
all mankind in proportion to the sweat of their 
brows.^ This phrase: "In the name of God, 
amen ! " when used to legalize a violation of God's 
high ordinance, is blasphemy. 

It is impious, in a will, or in any other document, 
to introduce the name of the Creator as a witness 
to the degradation or spoliation of the people He 
created in His image. That God could approve an 
inequality of the cradle as to the common right of 
all men to their own earnings, is unthinkable. 

" I give, devise and bequeath to my son, his heirs, 
executors, administrators and assigns for ever." 
The world is moving toward justice and freedom 
— toward the ultimate ideal of the earned to the 
earner only ; yet, so impudently does this document 
assert the right of the idler as to confer upon him 

1 Isaiah Ixv, 22. 



70 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

unearned millions, without desert upon his part, 
and for ever I And these millions, though unearned 
by him, must in the very nature of things be earned 
by those who labour. 

There are no limitations here, no statements that 
he shall enjoy for a time and then relinquish what 
is not his, to take his chance in the world by the 
rendering of service; no limitation even upon his 
death. But to him is given the legal right to be- 
stow upon his heirs, that which the testator, being 
dead, has no power to guarantee to him. 

The very word " Will,'' whereby we describe the 
instrument through which an estate is made per- 
petual, becomes a misnomer and contradiction of 
itself the moment the act by which it becomes ef- 
fectual takes place. The will of a man is a power 
of his mind, and the testator being now dead, his 
mind is non-existent, save as it may be preserved 
by its creator in a form we know^ not of. The 
" will '' of the mind does not now exist. It existed 
when the testator was alive ; but we have no means 
of ascertaining what it is after his death. No doubt 
the Infinite God, welcoming the passing soul into 
His dear bosom has shown to the spirit of the dead 
what the living could not perceive, that his human 
will was at enmity with the plan of Grod because it 



THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 71 

forbade the reward of their toil to uncounted mil- 
lions of His children yet unborn. 

After the death of any man^ the will to bestow 
unearned money upon his son, must be the will of 
the workers of the living generation that supports 
itself. The " wilP' of the testator then becomes 
a request which, if fair and just to all mankind, 
should be granted, and if unjust, improper or of 
bad policy, should be refused. 

How strange it is that if a penniless man living 
today should arbitrarily declare himself entitled 
to live without labour in the enjoyment of the in- 
come on a million dollars, w^e would put him in 
an insane asylum ; yet if he should produce the cer- 
tificate of a certain dead man to the same effect, 
we would at once support him in his claim. 



CHAPTER XII 

"divine right of kings," — AND OP HEIRS 

The natural property rights of man are founded 
as we have seen, ujion the application of labour to 
natural resources, whether that labour be of the 
mind or of the body. 

All subsequent rights to property must be based 
upon that fundamental title granted by nature. It 
therefore follows that any seizure or appropriation 
of property by one who lacks the title granted by 
nature, is robbery if committed in violation of law 
and tyranny if committed with its sanction. 

Whence arose, then, the idea that the handing 
down of inheritances from father to son is a just 
custom? Why, viewing the misery it has produced 
and is today producing in poverty, crime, disease 
and death, do human beings whose hearts flame at 
the injustice of cradle inequality, submit to it as 
a matter of course? For what cause is it that the 
millionaire baby is merely envied and not disen- 
throned? 

It is not because mankind does not inherently love 

72 



^^ DIVINE EIGHT OF KINGS'' 73 

justice, for most men do, even among those who 
seem to prosper through privilege. 

It is not altogether because of fear, though in this 
as in most of the affairs of life our worst enemy 
is a fear of truth that forbids us to even think 
logically and clearly, so sure are we that if we 
think we shall be forced to alter an ancient convic- 
tion I 

It is not entirely because we love and worship 
precedent, for in the smaller concerns of life, such 
as labour-saving devices, methods of housing, styles 
of clothing, etc., we change customs as rapidly as 
necessity and taste require, perhaps more so. 

The reason for our indifference to the subject of 
inheritance is a composite of the above and many 
other active causes ; but among them all is one di- 
rect influence that overshadows all, historically, 
and is of such vital importance to a clear under- 
standing of the plight in which we find ourselves, 
as to demand careful consideration at this point. 
That is the fact that the doctrine of the right of 
inheritance is the legitimate offspring of the theory 
of the Divine Right of Kings. And since that the- 
ory, now entirely disproved, bears so many points 
of exact similarity to the present claim for the 
Divine Right of Money Kings, I wish to pay it some 
particular attention. 



74 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

The impudent claims of divine authority for 
kings are familiar to all students of history, as are 
also the distressing stories of the wrongs of the 
people at their hands. The power of kings has 
been modified in form and extent throughout the 
ages from the early periods of modern civilization 
when the nod of a Nero or a Caligula could extermi- 
nate a life, to the present day; but in its essence it 
has remained the same up to the very threshold 
of the century just past — a right said to he inher- 
ent in the king himself. Even as recently as the 
time of our Revolutionary War, Burke said in Par- 
liament, " The King of England holds his crown in 
contempt of the Revolutionary Society," Louis XV 
even more arrogantly put it, " I am the State," and 
Fox, carrying the same doctrine one generation 
farther, asserted, ^^ The Prince of Wales has a right 
in Himself J as heir in succession, to assume the 
government, tvith or without the peoples consent.^' 

It was not contended by the supporters of Henry 
the Eighth that his ideas of family life were pure; 
it was not claimed of George the Third that he was 
not insane; no defence of Louis XV included any 
considerations as to his profligacy; it was simply 
asserted of these men that the throne was theirs hy 
right, and of their heirs in succession that the right 
to rule a people was transferable by inheritance; 



" DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS " 75 

as Fox put it '^^ with or without the people^s con- 
sent.'^ 

The absurdity of this claim of Divine Right and 
especially the entanglement into which it draws 
the Creator by its implications, becomes positively 
monstrous when we consider the character and 
abilities of the entire list of kings who were ruling 
Europe at the very time these words were spoken. 
Upon this point we have the statement of Thomas 
Jefferson who spent several years in European 
courts between the end of the American Revolution 
and the beginning of the French Revolution. 
Writing twenty years later to Governor John Lang- 
don of New Hampshire, Jefferson says : 

Monticello, March 5, 1810. 
" When I observed, that the King of England was 
a cipher, I did not mean to confine the observation 
to the mere individual now on that throne. The 
practice of Kings marrying only in the families of 
Kings has been that of Europe for some centuries. 
Now, take any race of animals, confine them in 
idleness and inaction, whether in a sty, a stable, 
or a stateroom, pamper them with high diet, gratify 
all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensu- 
alities, nourish their passions, let everything bend 
before them, and banish whatever might lead them 



76 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

to think, and in a few generations they become all 
body and no mind ; and this too by a law of nature, 
by that very law by which we are in the constant 
practice of changing the characters and propensi- 
ties of the animals we raise for our own purposes. 
Such is the regimen in raising Kings, and in this 
way they have gone on for centuries. While in 
Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating 
the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of 
Europe. Louis the XVI was a fool, of my own 
knowledge, and in despite of the answers made for 
him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, 
and of Naples the same. They passed their lives 
in hunting and despatched two couriers a week, one 
thousand miles, to let each other know what game 
they had killed the preceding days. The King of 
Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. 
The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by 
nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their 
sons, as regents, exercised the powers of govern- 
ment. The King of Prussia, successor to the great 
Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in 
mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria 
were really crazy, and George of England, you 
know, was in a straight-waistcoat. There re- 
mained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been 
too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. 



"DIVI:NE EIGHT OF KINGS" 77 

In this state Bonaparte found Europe ; and it was 
tiiis state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a 
struggle. These animals had become without 
mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary 
monarchy be, after a few generations. Alexander, 
the grandson of Catherine, is yet an exception. He 
is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third 
generation. His race is not yet worn out. And 
so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the 
Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all 
such good men and true, in His holy keeping.^ 

Thomas Jefferson." 

The claim of Fox that " The Prince of Wales has 
a right in Himself, as heir in succession, to assume 
the government, with or without the people's con- 
sent " passes from the absurd to the outrageous, in 
the light of the cold facts stated by Jefferson. Yet, 
outrageous as it is, it is not a particle different in 
any essential respect from the claims of heirs to- 
day. It needs only to have the first words, and one 
other, changed, to precisely express the defence of 
inheritance in the twentieth century. ^^ The son of 
a millionaire has a right in himself ^ as heir in sue- 
cession^ to assume his fathers fortune, with or with- 
out the people's consent.'' 

1 Thomas Jefferson, Letters and Addresses, edited by Parker 
and Viles. Sun Dial Classics Co., Pub., N. T. 



78 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

In 1688 the people of England, having no king 
of their own, and presumably no one in England 
with blood blue enough to handle the job, imported 
William and Mary, the former a foreigner who 
could not speak the English language except 
crudely, to rule over them — a piece of subservi- 
ence to the idea of royalty that is almost unthink- 
able in its absurdity. " We do most humbly and 
faithfully submit ourselves, our heirs and our pos- 
terity for ever/-' said Parliament, to this imported 
king and queen. Passing for the time, the utter 
impossibility of people submitting their heirs and 
posterity to anything or anybody, — and the injus- 
tice of so binding future generations even if the 
power to do so existed, could any " Declaration of 
Insignificance^^ be more outrageous than this? Is 
it possible that men made in the image of God have 
said these things and are saying them today? 

Yes, it is possible. These things are being said, 
in a different form, but with precisely the same 
meaning. ^^ I give, devise and bequeath , to my son, 
Ms heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, 
for ever ^' the right to command the labour and se- 
cure the profits of others. This has no difference in 
meaning from the " Declaration of Insignificance " 
of the English Parliament to William and Mary, 
and to make the parallel more exact, this declara- 



" DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS " 79 

tion of ours is being made today in the United 
States, to thousands of non-resident and even for- 
eign heirs, who receive inheritances from a country 
that they have deserted, and spend their patrimony 
upon an alien soil, 

" My parliament,'' says the King of England. 

" My mujiks," said the now deposed Czar of Rus- 
sia, and with the title of possession came also the 
power of life and death. Almost overwhelming in 
its pathos is the very style of expression used by 
rulers. " I wall defend my frontier," said the Czar 
of Russia in 1914, " if it takes my last mujik,'' ^ and 
it reminds the reader of that harangue of the gen- 
eral in merry fiction who said, " Soldiers, I will 
defend my honour if it takes the last drop of your 
blood.'' 

" Mine " and " thine " are words that should 
have thrown over them the sanctity of nature's only 
title to ownership; and the poverty of the world 
arises from a failure to make the right distinction 
between them, just as its wars have been so created. 
" My money " spoken by an heir of wealth that he 
has not created, is precisely analogous to "my 
mujiks " spoken by a Czar. 

1 It is interesting to note that the Czar lost his last mujik, 
and that the mujiks lost their last Czar, before the words 
quoted were three years old. 



CHAPTER XIII 

ARGUMENTS FOR MONARCHY AND INHERITANCE 

IDENTICAL. THE INHERITANCE 

PRINCIPLE A ROOT EVIL 

The reasons advanced in favour of the doctrine of 
the Divine Right of Kings, bear a striking, almost 
startling, similarity to the arguments in favour of 
the inheritance of money. 

First it is claimed that the dead king so desired. 
If he was a bad king achieving his throne by usurpa- 
tion certainly this should be a reason against the 
accession of the crown prince rather than for it, on 
account of the danger that he might inherit his 
father's evil qualities. If he was a good king, and 
secured his power by the choice of the people, any 
theory in favour of his right to the title on those 
grounds would demand that the field be left open 
for the people to a similar freedom of choice of his 
successor. 

Second, it is asserted that the crown prince has 
an inherent right in and of himself, to ascend the 
throne. Nothing can be more false than this; for 

80 



MONAECHY AND INHERITANCE 81 

if the crown prince is the choice of the people, no 
such declaration of his rights is necessary ; whereas 
if he is not the choice of the people, no amount of 
claims of divine right can possibly sanction his 
coronation. 

Third, it is alleged that the stability of govern- 
ment depends upon the peaceable accession of the 
crown prince. The truth of this claim is a question 
always, of the individual case. Since history be- 
gan, the monarchial form of government has been 
unstable on account of the conflicting claims of 
heirs; the uncertainties of heirship have been and 
are a constant contradiction to the doctrine of sta- 
bility through lineal accession. The pages of his- 
tory are stained with stories of civil wars, royal 
murders and court intrigue caused by the claims of 
quarrelling heirs, each asserting a divine right 
which none possessed. 

Fourth, royal families are said to be more ca- 
pable of ruling than are common people. Again the 
question becomes one of fact, to be determined in 
individual cases, with the evidence of history 
through century after century, contradicting the 
claim, by sending idiots, lunatics, drunkards, de- 
generates and weaklings into the families of royal 
blood until in Europe their incapacity and weak- 
ness, to say nothing of the syphilitic strain that 



82 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

runs throughout certain royal families, has made 
a byword for the general tongue. Few European 
kings are remembered today as great, though all 
the world's opportunities have been thrust upon 
them; but history resounds with the glory of the 
names of peasants, scholars, scientists, warriors 
and rulers who have risen to great heights against 
almost insurmountable obstacles. 

And, finally, as a last argument for monarchy, 
comes precedent. " It has always been so," say the 
defenders of all iniquities! Yet, until its justice 
is shown by study and analysis, a general practice 
seldom proves anything except the fact of its own 
existence ; and evil rules by custom where good must 
find a reason. 

All these familiar arguments for aristocratic gov- 
ernment were seriously advanced (at least they 
were seriously received) all over the earth until at 
Lexington was fired the shot heard round the world. 
Their absurdity is today acknowledged by all think- 
ers, yet few have taken the trouble to see that they 
are practically identical with the arguments ad- 
vanced today in favour of inherited wealth. Few 
realize that the title to wealth on the part of one 
who did not earn it cannot come from a dead man 
no matter how well that man governed and man- 
aged the workers whom he gathered around him by 



MONARCHY AND INHERITANCE 83 

his merit. Few consider that the right to what he 
has not produced is not and cannot be inherent in 
any heir, '''' with or without the consent ^^ of those 
who are daily producing his food and clothing. 
Few have given thought to the terrible inefficiency 
and instability in business that results from the se- 
lection of managers by the accident of birth. Few 
consider the vital damage that results even to the 
" sons of idleness " themselves, in moral blight and 
physical incapacity, from their accession to unde- 
served power. And, above all, so great is our wor- 
ship of things as they are, that the sma,ll number 
of men who do see the truth clearly, are over- 
whelmed in the rushing current of an unjust prece- 
dent. 

In making our adjustment from monarchy to 
democracy in the United States, we rid ourselves 
of the outward form of tyranny, but did not destroy 
its substance. 

This is not to be wondered at. All upward prog- 
ress is slow, and privilege, which is the essence of 
tyranny, is not easily shaken off. Recognized in 
one disguise, it readily assumes another, and its 
enemies, elated by their success in destroying the 
form they recognize, are not quick to perceive its 
new mask. 

We, of the United States, and our fellow reform- 



84 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

erg of France, in destroying monarchy, made the 
error usual to mankind, of mistaking the form of 
tyranny for the substance. We rid ourselves of 
those creatures who bore the titles of King, Duke 
and Count, but forgot that the inherited title was 
never anything but a name, and that the real power 
of inheritance lay not in the inheritance of a name, 
but of an estate. 

We allowed the inheritance of estates to con- 
tinue, congratulating ourselves because we had 
taken away the offensive titles, — not pausing to 
reflect that the real evil would be much more diffi- 
cult to recognize as soon as one of the easy means 
of its identification had been removed. We were 
pleased that while we could not, or did not, decrease 
the financial power of an heir, we now had a system 
whereby all were equal in their accidental right to 
become heirs. 

But of what avail is an accidental right when the 
power to control the event is lacking? No child has 
the smallest particle of power to name the family 
into which it shall make its appearance. Under 
Monarchy, children of powerful men inherit power. 
Under our present inheritance laws, precisely 
the same evil condition exists. We need not 
change a word or letter of the phrase — ^' Children 
of powerful men inherit power.-' It applies now 



MONARCHY AND INHERITANCE 85 

as then. The wrong of financial inequality of the 
cradle is an indefensible evil. The evil of the 
theory of the Divine Right of Kings is identical 
with the evil of the Divine Right of Inheritance. 
The one source of injustice and inhumanity is 
special privilege, and the privilege of starting life 
with an inheritance of a million dollars earned by 
somebody else is one of the most flagrant forms of 
special privilege that the world can know. It has 
no redeeming features, and no defence save in a 
sentiment of family selfishness that mocks at the 
undeserved poverty of millions, and sits unashamed 
while a world of disinherited children are stumbling 
through factories and streets into hospitals, jails, 
brothels and poor-houses. 

There is scarcely an argument against heredi- 
tary monarchy that does not apply with equal force 
against hereditary wealth. 

The right to inherit a kingdom is no more absurd 
than the right to inherit a fortune. There are a 
hundred fortunes in the world today that carry 
with them more power than the King of England 
has possessed for a century and a half. 

As hereditary monarchy produces incompetent 
rulers, so hereditary wealth places authority in the 
hands of the unfit. 

As hereditary monarchy perpetuates inequali- 



86 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

ties of station and breeds a family pride that is out 
of keeping with any personal merit of the prince, so 
hereditary wealth fosters and encourages a claim 
to breeding in the scions of families in which the 
strain of strong blood has been long extinguished. 

As wars and misery follow in the train of mon- 
archy, so strikes and poverty increase with each 
fresh injury to business through hereditary inca- 
pacity. ^' My father chastised you with whips but 
I will chastise you with scorpions '^ are words' that 
have a familiar ring in them today. The founder 
of a business seldom has the same contempt for his 
employes and the same sublime certainty of his 
right to money as has the heir w^ho succeeds him. 

The inherited kingdom and the inherited fortune 
will moulder together and be together forgotten in 
the dust of a dishonourable oblivion. They arose 
through similar assumptions of power, through 
authority conceived to be secured from the dead, 
and will be together relegated to the history of out- 
grown tyrannies by a generation of living men. A 
people awakening to industrial freedom is as cer- 
tain to cast off the yoke of inherited money as it has 
been vigorous in discarding the robes and titles of 
royalty, — and for the same reason. 

The evil of monarchy and the related and conse- 
quent evil of money aristocracy, find their chief pro- 



MONAECHY AND INHEEITANCE 87 

tection in the inheritance principle and in this prin- 
ciple lies the only really great danger to the prog- 
ress of democracy. It is necessary therefore to pay 
it some attention at this point. 

^' If some men had not been born slaves and 
othes born masters," says George A. Richardson, 
" slavery would have extinguished itself.'' That 
this is true and that it applies with as much force 
to economic inequality as to chattel slavery, must 
be evident to any one who gives the matter a reas- 
onable amount of thought. 

Had there never been in the world human beings 
born into slavery, inheriting the condition of servi- 
tude from their parents, but each child born free, it 
would always have been necessary for those who 
wished slaves to conquer men born free. Such an 
enterprise would have been of doubtful issue in 
many cases and the prospective master would have 
hesitated to undertake a contest which might result 
in making him a slave instead of a master. This, 
indeed, was the repeated experience of nations in 
ancient days when the accepted result of battle was 
slavery for the vanquished. As a matter of fact 
slavery brought about by conquest completely ex- 
tinguished itself over a thousand years before the 
institution of hereditary slavery was abolished. 

The most successful form of slavery and the form 



88 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

most difficult to eradicate was that form that was 
founded upon the hereditary principle. The si aye 
holding class even as late as the nineteenth century 
in the United States, repeatedly rejected proposals 
providing for the gradual abolition of slavery 
through a provision that children born in the future 
should be born free. Whether consciously or in- 
stinctively the class who lived by the sweat of men's 
brows, realized the certainty of the defeat of their 
designs if the hereditary principle should be made 
to operate against them instead of operating in their 
favour. Those who analysed the subject knew that 
the enslavement of men born free had been long ago 
proven imx)ossible. Their sole reliance was placed 
upon the hereditary feature of their system. 

It is in such a relation to the continuance of priv- 
ilege that the defenders of unearned wealth stand 
today. Either consciously or instinctively the ben- 
eficiaries of privilege of all kinds realize that the 
bulwark of their power as a class is the hereditary 
principle whereby children from their birth are 
forced to recognize the existence of an economic in- 
equality against which they have neither the power 
to fight nor the courage to protest. In the minds 
of the disinherited is a natural feeling that it is vain 
to struggle against an economic status fixed before 
their birth. Being children when the first discov- 



MONARCHY AND INHERITANCE 89 

ery of their handicap is made, they become accus- 
tomed to the contemplation of the hardship before 
them while their minds are not sufficiently formed 
to grasp its significance; and when they reach the 
estate of maturity they accept the conditions of life 
as they find them. 

Just as it was impossible for slavery to long exist 
among free-born nations who sought to enslave each 
other; so today it would be impossible for special 
grants of money to be secured by a favoured few 
at the expense of another class of men, if both 
classes were born with equal opportunity at the 
cradle. All men would fear to introduce measures 
proposing that inequalities of inheritance should 
take place after an equal start in life had been se- 
cured, on account of the dread that they might 
prove to be the victims instead of the favourites of 
fortune. Each man's fear that he might himself be 
placed at an economic disadvantage would operate 
to prevent him from attempting to inflict upon 
others a disadvantage that might fall upon himself. 
Such a system must be inaugurated before the chil- 
dren are born w^ho are to be required to submit to 
it. Take away the hereditary principle and the 
whole theory of favouritism among heirs will be at 
once abandoned by mankind. No other principle 
of selection for special unearned awards will take 



90 THE ABOLITION OF mHERITANCE 

its place, because no other such principle is in- 
trenched in the customs of mankind. The principle 
of self-protection will lead all men to grant equal 
rights to others in order thereby to attain them 
more certainly for themselves. 

As in the case of both monarchy and slavery, the 
root evil in transfers of money without an equiva- 
lent in service is the hereditary principle. 



PAET III 



INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM THE 
STANDPOINT OF ECONOMIC RESULTS 



CHAPTEE XIV 

CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES 



iC 



Privilege " is the hateful word whereby we des- 
ignate the legal permission to get without giving. 

As previously explained, it should be carefully 
distinguished from earned capital and labour, both 
of which confer benefits upon the community. 

Earnest and thoughtful people may disagree as 
to the proportion of their joint product to w^hich 
labour and earned capital are respectively entitled; 
but as to the part of that product to which privilege 
is entitled, there can be no question whatever in any 
sane mind. It is entitled to nothing. When la- 
bour and earned capital together exterminate priv- 
ilege there will be found easy means to adjust such 
small inequalities as shall then exist between them. 
Manifestly, however, they should first unite to elim- 
inate their common enemy. 

The speculator who owns without using, and the 
heir whose merit is simply that he was horn, are 
not now, and never have been, entitled to what they 
do not earn. Yet these favourites of fortune con- 
trol the largest part of the world's wealth. 

93 



94 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

The extent of their power is so well known as to 
scarcely require a fresh portrayal here, yet it is so 
vital to an understanding of the importance of our 
topic that I shall present certain facts briefly, 
gained from the official figures of the United States 
Government. 

The report of the United States Industrial Com- 
mission in 1915, states that the rich, who comprise 
two per cent, of the people, own sixty per cent, of 
the wealth, the middle class (thirty-three per cent, 
of the people) own thirty-five per cent., and the poor 
(sixty-five per cent, of the people) own only five per 
cent.^ 

Three-fourths of the male wage-earners earn less 
than 1750.00 a year.^ Three-fourths! A figure 
supported by our own government statistics ! One- 
third of the families of wage-earners, secure from 

1 Three-quarters of a century ago, Daniel Webster, foreseeing 
the calamity of concentrated wealth that has since come upon 
us, declared: 

" The true principle of free and popular government would 
seem to be so to construct it as to give to all, or at least to a 
very great majority, an interest in its preservation ; to found 
it, as other things are founded, on men's interests . . . The 
freest government, if it could exist, would not be long accept- 
able if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumu- 
lation of property in a few hands, and to render the great mass 
of the population penniless." 

2 See Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Rela- 
tions, 1915, p. 25. 



CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH 95 

the earnings of father, mother and children, less 
than 1500.00 a year, which in this country means a 
condition of abject poverty. One-fifth of the farm 
land of the United States is owned by less than one 
per cent, of the farmers, and of these huge holdings 
only 18.7' per cent, (or less than one-fifth) is culti- 
vated, while 2,250,000 farmers are struggling along 
on less than fifty acres apiece, and uncounted mul- 
titudes for whose use God created the earth and 
who want to get access to it, are idle and miserable, 
tramping city streets. 

Of the eight million women working for their 
daily bread less than half get |6.00 per week. 
American society was founded and still exists on 
the theoretical basis that the father is the support 
of the family until the children become of age ; yet 
37 per cent, of the mothers of the working class are 
compelled to do daily work for a living and are able 
to give their children only the most scant atten- 
tion. 

What a contrast does the condition of the rich 
present ! In the United States there are 1598 peo- 
ple who have incomes of $100,000.00 per year, and 
44 families who have incomes of over |1, 000,000.00 
per year.^ Six financial groups and their affiliated 
interests employ 2,651,684 people. 

iThe New York World in 1913 published a list of a few of 



96 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 



The concentration of wealth is enormous. In the 
twenty-two years from 1890 to 1912 the total wealth 
of this country increased 188 per cent., but the 

the largest incomes in excess of a million dollars a year, which 
is given below : 



Name. 


Capital. 


Income. 


John D. Rockefeller 

Andrew Carnegie 


$500,000,000 

300,000,000 

200,000,000 

120,000,000 

100,000,000 

100,000,000 

100,000,000 

80,000,000 

75,000,000 

68,000,000 

64,000,000 

50,000,000 

65,000,000 

70,000,000 

70,000,000 

70,000,000 

74,000,000 

70,000,000 

60,000,000 

60,000,000 

50,000,000 

60,000,000 

50,000,000 

50,000,000 

60,000,000 

50,000.000 

50,000,000 

45,000.000 

45,000,000 


$50,000,000 

15,000,000 

20,000,000 

6,000,000 

5,000,000 

5,000,000 


William Rockefeller 

Estate of Marshall Field 

George F. Baker 

Henry Phipps 


Henry O. Frick 

William A. Clark 

Estate of J. P. Morgan 

Estate of E. H. Harriman 

Estate of Russell Sage 

W. K. Vanderbilt 

Estate of John S. Kennedy 

Estate of John J. Astor 

W. W. Astor 

J. J. Hill 

Isaac Stephenson 


5,000,000 
4,000,000 
7,500,000 
3,400,000 
3,200,000 
2,500,000 
3,250,000 
3,500,000 
3,600,000 
3,500,000 
3,700,000 


Jay Gould estate 


3,500,000 


Estate of Mrs. Hetty Green 

Estate of Cornelius Vanderbilt . . . 
Estate of William Weightman . . . 

Estate of Ogden Goelet 

W. L. Moore , 

Arthur C. James 

Estate of Robert Goelet 


3,000,000 
2,500,000 
2,500,000 
3,000,000 
2,500,000 
2,500.000 
3,000,000 


Guggenheim estate 

Thomas F. Ryan 

Edward Morris 

J. O. Armour 


2,500,000 
2,500,000 
2,250,000 
2,250,000 


Total of 29 fortunes 


$2,756,000,000 


$176,150,000 



These twenty-nine fortunes alone, are equal to the entire 
expenditure of the United States government for all purposes 
for the four years of 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916. 



CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH 97 

wages of labourers in the basic industries increased 
only 95 per cent., the remainder of the increase 
going to enlarge the holdings of the few. 

These figures are not the mental wanderings of a 
loose-tongued, tangent-minded fanatic. They are 
taken directly from statistics compiled by a com- 
mission appointed by Congress to report upon con- 
ditions that required a year and a half to investi- 
gate; and the facts that they reveal were used 
within six months of their publication by the gov- 
ernment itself in its advertising posters soliciting 
the enlistment of young men in the navy. 

This is the advertisement, which was spread 
broadcast over the United States : 

" Young men, think over what you have NOW 
and what promise the FUTURE holds out for you; 
then, learn what the navy offers you. Check up 
each and every item in the two columns which fol- 
low; compare each item in the Civil Life column 
with the opposite item in the Navy column — then 
judge which column sums up higher. 

IN CIVIL LIFE IN THE NAVY 

1. Jobs uncertain; strikes; 1. Steady and healthy em- 

lay-ofiFs, sickness. ployment with good pay. 

2. Promotion and advance- 2. Promotion quick and sure 

ment uncertain and for deserving men. 

slow. 



98 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 



3. Favouritism and partial- 

ity frequently shown. 

4. Pay small and limited 

while learning a trade. 

5. Same old, monotonous, 

tiresome grind every 
day. 

6. Stuffy, gloomy, uninter- 

esting worlsing-place. 

7. When sick your pay stops 

and doctor's bill starts. 

8. If disabled or injured you 

receive little or no pay. 

9. If you die your family get 

only what you have 
saved from your small 
wages. 

10. Little CLEAK money ; near- 

ly all your pay goes for 
living expenses. 

11. Old age, sickness, little 

money saved, your job 
goes to a younger and 
more active man. 



3. No unfairness of prefer- 

ence; the best man 
wins. 

4. Pay good with chance to 

learn a useful trade. 

5. Travel, education, knowl- 

edge, change of scene. 

6. Fresh air, sun, sea ; clean, 

healthful, athletic life. 

7. When sick, pay goes on, 

doctor and hospital 
free. 

8. If you are disabled you 

get a generous pension. 

9. If you die, six-months' 

pay goes to your family 
— with a Liberal pen- 
sion. 

10. Your pay is clear money ; 

no expense or outlay for 
clothing. 

11. After 80 years' service, re- 

tirement on three- 
fourths pay, plus $15.75 
for allowances. 



"This advertisement/' says William Marion 
Keedy, " tells more about the condition of the work- 
ingman, and tells it more effectively than anything 
you can find in the writings of Eugene Debs, Bill 
Haywood or Emma Goldman. This is a summary 
by our Uncle Sam himself. It is the government 
speaking, convicting itself out of its own mouth." 

Men earned a living one hundred years ago when 



CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH 99 

there was no modern machinery or popular educa- 
tion. Today with electricity, steam, trains, tele- 
graphs, telephones, automobiles, power plants, har- 
vesting machines, typewriters and all the thousands 
of similar devices that lighten labour and multiply 
production, one twentieth of the former labour of 
the world should produce the same result. Why 
has it failed to do so? Why is poverty most 
marked and unemployment most terrible in the very 
districts where industrial progress most abounds? 

It is because privilege stands at the source of all 
industry, demanding and receiving its tribute from 
labour and earned capital alike without rendering 
any return. 

Practically all the swollen fortunes above men- 
tioned, declares the Industrial Commission's Re- 
port, are so hedged about with restrictions, that 
they have become absolute perpetuities. They pass 
on from generation to generation, to heirs who per- 
form no service in return, and who make use of their 
wealth to wrest from constructive and intelligent 
capitalists the control of future industries to which 
they are legitimately entitled. 

Are figures dry and uninteresting? I have pur- 
posely used few of them, and shall in the future use 
but few, preferring to rely upon the general knowl- 
edge of conditions that nearly all people of ordi- 



100 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

nary intelligence possess ; but these figures, I think, 
are wet with the tears of dry-breasted mothers as 
they look with hungry longing at the faces of thin 
children. And I think, too, that they are wet with 
the dripping sweat and blood of men who toil ter- 
ribly for a sum so small that three hundred thou- 
sand of them must work a year for the amount the 
Astor boy received in 1912 in one vast inheritance, 
only to find at the end of the year that they have 
spent their all for food and clothing, while the 
Astor child, unless he has spent as much as eighteen 
thousand of them have received during the year has 
more money at the end of it than at the beginning. 

The 1642 families mentioned in the report have 
property worth not less than the annual labour of 
four million working men. Even if every dollar 
of these fortunes had been earned by the labour of 
the person holding it, the danger to society of such 
tremendous concentration of wealth would be great. 
When we consider the privileges through which 
most of it was no doubt secured, this danger be- 
comes a fearful menace; and when we add to this 
its transfer to the new hands of men who had no 
part in its acquirement, and could have had none, 
being not yet born, it seems the height of insanity to 
dismiss the subject without a mighty and immediate 
attempt at its solution. 



CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH 101 

The danger of the concentration of capital in a 
few hands can be well apprehended by imagining 
the property of the whole earth inherited by a single 
individual. This is not so remote from the bounds 
of possibility as might be supposed; for, several 
years before the investigations of the United States 
Industrial Commission from which figures have 
been quoted, Senator La Follette ^ pointed out the 
fact that seven financial institutions practically 
controlled all the big enterprises of the United 
States; and the situation is similar in other coun- 
tries. If it is right for one man or boy to inherit 
$160,000,000.00 it would be right for him to inherit 
a billion ; and it would be right for him to become 
the owner of the whole earth by the same means. 

Indulge me by imagining such a case for a mo- 
ment. Would not this man have absolute power, 
so long as his right to all property was recognized, 
so that the only wage necessary for him to pay to 
any man would be enough to keep him from starv- 
ing to death? And does not the ownership of sixty 
per cent, of the wealth of the United States by two 
per cent, of its people have a like effect? 

But there is this to be observed. The very omni- 
potence of the power of one man who owned the 

1 Speech in Senate on " Centralization of Control in Industry 
and Finance," Mar. 17-24, 1908 (S. 3023). 



102 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

whole earth, might make him so sure of his future 
as to lead him to treat all mankind generously, 
as a god would treat them; but the two per cent, 
of our people who own sixty per cent, of our wealth 
are so fearful of losing what they have in the silly 
struggle for more that they are compelled by the 
very irony of circumstances to grind the faces of 
the poor continually, until the blood of their breth- 
ren cries out to them from the ground. 



CHAPTER XV 

CONCENTRATED WEALTH THE RUIN OF FORMER 

NATIONS 

History supports the statement that the concentra- 
tion of wealth has preceded the decay and ruin of 
the greatest nations of the past. One of the most 
remarkable of ancient civilizations was that of 
Egypt. Her educational system, her libraries, her 
temples and her tombs were the wonder and mys- 
tery of an uncultured world. Lost are many of 
her arts today, and modern man, mechanical 
Briareus though he is, has not been able yet to 
duplicate them. 

When the Nile Kingdom was finally overthrown, 
she was destroyed by her own weakness from 
within. Two per cent, of her people owned 97 per 
cent, of her wealth. 

So also when the sword of the conqueror came 
upon Persia. One per cent, of her population 
owned all the land. A nation of free men cannot 
be easily conquered ; it is only when men are indus- 
trially dependent that they welcome a foreign 
prince. 

103 



104 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

When haughty Babylon fell, she of the hanging 
gardens and the wine-filled cups, practically all her 
wealth was in the control of two per cent, of her 
population, and the degradation of the masses was 
most fearful. 

The decline of world-conquering Rome com- 
menced when the agrarian system she had adopted 
was abandoned, and 1800 individuals virtually 
owned the empire of the Caesars. We have it upon 
the authority of Pliny that " great estates ruined 
Italy " as they had ruined Greece, and in this opin- 
ion historians in general concur. 



CHAPTER XVr 

HISTORIC ATTEMPTS TO CHECK THE CONCENTRATION 

OF WEALTH 

Attempts have not been lacking in all historic 
times to check the tremendous concentration of 
power that results when wealth gravitates into the 
hands of a few. Like the first efforts to check chat- 
tel slavery, these attempts have been fragmentary 
and unsuccessful, yet they have pointed out the 
path of liberty; and thinkers of all ages have noted 
them, and, with them as beacon lights, have pre- 
served as much of the principles they expressed as 
the progress of the race would permit. 

Moses, the first great law maker, decreed that 
every fiftieth year should be the Year of Jubilee, 
when liberty should be proclaimed through all the 
land unto all the inhabitants thereof, and every man 
should return unto his possessions, — the year when 
the inequalities of the past half century should be 
obliterated, and the disinherited should be granted 
that equal right to opportunity to which the very 
fact of their existence entitled them. 

Lycurgus, King of Sparta, through ostracism, 

105 



106 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

banished citizens whose wealth had become so great 
as to constitute a menace to the state^ and divided 
all the lands in Laconia into 39,000 lots, one lot for 
each citizen of Sparta or free inhabitant of Laconia. 

Through the influence of Lucinus Stole, a Roman 
legislator, a law was enacted in accordance with 
w^hich no single person was to be allowed to own 
more than 500 acres of land. 

Nor are ancient instances the only illustrations 
of the attempts of wise men to forestall the doom 
of governments grown vile through concentration 
of riches. Even in modern England and America, 
these attempts have recently been made and are be- 
ing made today. So conservative a political econo- 
mist as John Stuart Mill has said in his Principles 
of Political Economy y Volume I, page 289, " Were 
I framing a code of laws according to what seems 
to me best in itself, without regard to existing opin- 
ions and sentiments, I should prefer to restrict, not 
what any one might 'bequeath^ but what any one 
should be permitted to acquire by bequest or inher- 
itance. Each person should have power to dispose 
by will of his or her whole property, but not to 
lavish it in enriching some one individual beyond 
a certain maximum, which should be fixed suf- 
ficiently high to afford the means of comfortable 
independence.'' 



ATTEMPTS TO CHECK 107 

In an address that electrified America, Eoosevelt, 
the Strenuous, then President of the United States, 
declared, '' I feel that we shall ultimately have to 
consider the adoption of some such scheme as that 
of a progressive tax on all fortunes beyond a cer- 
tain amount, either given in life or devised, or be- 
queathed upon death to any individual — a tax 
so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner 
of one of these enormous fortunes to hand down 
more than a certain amount to any one individual." 

Such sentiments may well be said to express the 
feeling of both England and America; for Mill 
was too careful a political economist and Roosevelt 
too astute a politician to pursue wild fancies or 
recommend impossibilities. The civilized world is 
wrestling with the problem of unearned money, and 
of this class of wealth, those funds that are trans- 
ferred at the cradle furnish so conspicuous an ex- 
ample that all humanity is in rebellion at the injus- 
tice they typify, save only those few who hold this 
terrible power in their hands. 

There is not a state in the United States of Amer- 
ica in wliich the issue is not being fought out today, 
in legislature and precinct polling-place. There is 
no country in Europe, America or modern Austra- 
lasia where the problem is not hastening to its solu- 
tion. And in America as well as in Europe the 



108 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

Great War has brought the question of inheritances 
and the need for taxes into such juxtaposition, as to 
leave the answer indelibly written in the minds and 
hearts of all citizens. Make no mistake, dear 
friends ! The sons of dead soldiers are not going to 
continue to support the heirs of those who stayed 
at home to accumulate ! 

The greatest war in all the world will be the war 
against unearned money. Let us hope that it will 
be fought with ballots rather than bullets. 



CHAPTER XVII 

HOW INHERITED WEALTH CAUSES INHERITED POVERTY 

It is a law of evil, as of good, that it grows stronger 
as it becomes more firmly established by custom. 

The evil of iuheritance, perhaps, not great in 
early ages, has grown to gigantic proportions with 
the modern increase in individual fortunes and con- 
centration of wealth. There is perhaps no menace 
to society the dangers of which have been more 
clearly pointed out during recent years ; but despite 
laws to the contrary, means have been found to per- 
petuate and enlarge family fortunes throughout 
many generations without the performance of serv- 
ice upon the part of heirs. 

To gain a clear conception of the extent of the 
power that is transferred to heirs, — to get a vivid 
mental picture of it, — let us imagine all the prop- 
erty owners of an entire generation dying on the 
same day and that their heirs, who receive the prop- 
erty, are all born on the same day that their fathers 
die — an old generation passing away and a new 
one entering the world, all at the same moment. 

109 



110 THE ABOLITION OP INHERITANCE 

It goes without saying that our existing inher- 
itance law would not be tolerated for a moment un- 
der such a condition. The evil of it would be so 
apparent, the injustice so absurd, that not even the 
beneficiaries would dare to make such a vile pro- 
posal as that they should receive an advantage over 
others at birth. But passing that thought for the 
present, let us consider now only the extent of the 
property thus transferred. It would he all the 
property of the world. 

Such a transfer of the world's real property 
would be tragedy enough. Every house, every ma- 
chine, every book, every factory, every stock of mer- 
chandise, every ounce of gold and silver, would fall 
into the hands of a few favoured, and all the rest 
would be compelled to work half w^ay to old age 
to even begin to compete in the markets of the world 
for a fair share of what had been given, without 
labour, to the favoured ones, who, with leisure, cul- 
ture and education paid for in advance, would have 
an infinite variety of advantages in the unequal 
contest. 

But when to this real, or tangible, property is 
added the fictitious property of the world the ex- 
tent of the power transferred is inconceivable. In 
addition to the factory that one child receives, he 
secures also a piece of paper that entitles him to 



INHERITED POVERTY 111 

deny permission to his competitor to build another 
factory on a piece of vacant land. In addition to 
the house he receives, he holds another piece of 
paper that entitles him to receive interest upon a 
government debt. In addition to the stock of mer- 
chandise that he inherits he holds a third piece of 
paper that entitles him to the future dividends of 
an industry in which a thousand men are employed 
and from which a hundred thousand workers must 
purchase their supplies. And this paper like other 
papers that he holds, carries with it a right to cast 
a controlling vote as to how the industry refer- 
red to shall be managed and whom it shall em- 
ploy. 

The favoured heirs of whom w^e are speaking re- 
ceive not only all the real, created tilings that la- 
bour has produced; they receive in addition the 
power to secure what will he produced. Not con- 
tent with appropriating the actual property of the 
past, the felonious fingers of the parasite are thrust 
into the already empty pockets of posterity to an- 
ticipate the earnings of the years to come. 

Has it occurred to you, reader, as surprising that 
every nation in the world has an enormous na- 
tional debt, mounting into the billions? That 
every city in this country and most of the cities all 
over the face of the earth have great issues of bonds 



112 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

to be paid? That even townships, dotting this na- 
tion every six miles, have their accumulations of 
debts, all to be paid somewhere, sometime, by the 
workers of the future? These debts are not to be 
paid by one nation to another, by one city to an- 
other, by one township to another township. They 
are simply the inconceivable burden to be paid 
by all the children of the future to the favoured 
heirs who receive government bonds, municipal 
bonds, and other evidences of indebtedness from 
their parents. I am not commenting now upon 
their validity, or the justice of the claims they rep- 
resent — but merely upon their size. They repre- 
sent burdens that were too heavy for the fathers to 
bear, faithfully though they worked — burdens that 
have been flung upon the shoulders of the coming 
generations — to be paid not to those who rendered 
to the state or city that service for which the bonds 
were issued,— but to be paid to heirs who do not 
toil. 

Heirs receive practically all their values not in 
tangible property, hut in evidences of indebtedness. 
The beneficiary of an estate does not usually find 
that a very large proportion of his wealth consists 
in machines, or buildings, or clothing, or food, or 
furniture; he finds it in pieces of paper in his 
father's safety deposit box, that certify to indebted- 



INHERITED POVERTY 113 

ness which must be paid by those who did not incur 
itj to those who did not earn it; and the excessive 
danger in inheritances lies in the fact that these 
pieces of paper can be and are so manipulated as 
to express an amount of indebtedness on the part 
of the world that is so far in excess of the actual 
inventory values of the property of the world, that 
the latter becomes nearly negligible. I do not de- 
sire to be understood as saying that it would be 
fair for even the actual property of the world to be 
thus transferred from sire to son ; for the principle 
would be just as wrong when applied to real prop- 
erty as when applied to evidences of indebtedness; 
but I wish to point out the metliod whereby the 
fortunes or power of heirs are enlarged far beyond 
the actual inventory of the world's wealth, and are 
made to represent the privilege of exacting a tribute 
incalculably larger than the actual value of the 
world's man-created property. And I desire to 
call attention to the fact that such evidences of in- 
debtedness as are represented by government and 
municipal bonds and certain other forms of stocks 
and bonds, are most easily transferred to heirs. 
Moreover, they acquire a security in later hands 
that they lacked in the hands of the first owners, 
for if graft be discovered or privilege unmasked in 
later years, the very fact that the thief is dead and 



114 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

cannot be punished, gives a security to those to 
whom he has transferred the property. 

The issuance of stocks and bonds in so far as it 
facilitates business transactions is not objection- 
able. It is necessary and desirable. Nearly all 
forms of commercial paper are a business necessity, 
and, as between those who secured a benefit and 
those who conferred that benefit when the original 
transaction was entered upon, no objection can be 
found to them when they correctly state the value 
for which they were issued. But when, as is often 
the case, they represent watered stock and other in- 
flated values that anticipate the earnings of a com- 
mercial enterprise for a generation in advance, or 
bonds for debts created by men now dead, they com- 
pel the sons of the disinherited to pay in sweat and 
blood for every bad bargain their parents were 
either induced or forced to make. 

Nothing can be more clear than that heirs secure 
not merely the property of the world, but a power 
that is vastly in excess of the value of that prop- 
erty. Whether it is twenty times as great (as 
most economists believe), or one hundred times as 
great, is not to the point. It is large enough — this 
purse of privilege — to enable the favourites of for- 
tune to prevent industry except upon their own 
terms as to both wages and the cost of living. 



INHERITED POVERTY 115 

It is thh power, transferred from father to son, 
that constitutes the menace of the privilege of in- 
heritance. Instead of destroying inequalities at 
least once a generation, we pass them on enlarged. 

But let us return to consider our illustration of 
all the parents of one generation dying and all the 
children of the next generation being born, upon the 
same day. What, think you, would be the extent of 
the power of those who thus received all the prop- 
erty and privileges of the world, against the great 
majority who received none? 

Assuming no rebellion, but a quiet, peaceable 
obedience to the existing law, what power would 
the favoured ones hold? The answer is: All the 
economic power in the world. That power, re- 
ceived not all at once, but a part of it each year, 
is the power that heirs inherit today ; and when we 
perceive this, we cease to wonder that there is pov- 
erty in a world of plenty ; suffering, disease, crime, 
prostitution, drunkenness and atheism in this para- 
dise of God; child-labour where machines should 
create luxury, — we cease to stand in amazement at 
suicide ; — we cease to gasp with shuddering sur- 
prise at tuberculosis and war;— -we only wonder 
why God saw fit to create a being who could under- 
stand that two halves make a whole, without under- 
standing that if one-half the wealth of the world is 



116 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

transferred without service, tliose who labour must 
necessarily receive only the other half of what they 
earn. 

This is the tragedy of those who toil. Labour 
and earned capital, in a democracy, are all-power- 
ful. Ninety-eight per cent of the ballots are in 
their hands. But their eyes are closed. They can- 
not see that privilege is despoiling them both. 

It may be observed here that the fact that all the 
past generation do not die on the same day, and 
that all the existing generation are not born on the 
same day, is responsible for the existence of our 
unjust inheritance law. Imagine again for a mo- 
ment, the impossible condition of all the old genera- 
tion dying upon the moment that all the new gen- 
eration were born, and that all the new generation 
at the moment of birth were capable of logical 
thought and vigorous action. Suppose it were pro- 
posed by the sons of those parents who were 
wealthy, to the sons of those who were poor, that 
the present inheritance law be adopted, a few of the 
new community receiving all the real wealth and 
power of the world, the majority nothing. I say 
that the children making that proposal would be 
either laughed at or pronounced insane ; and if they 
insisted upon enforcing their doctrine they would 
undoubtedly be put to death. Yet because the ques- 



INHERITED POVERTY IIT 

tion does not come up before us for decision in this 
dramatic form, but only one thirtieth of it each 
year, it is concealed from our sight and is not 
understood. 

The importance of the money power today is 
beginning to be seen more clearly than ever before. 
We are beginning to realize that while government 
by legislature and congress affects the purses of tax- 
payers once a year, and then only to a Yery small 
degree, government by financial authority affects 
the price of daily bread, clothing, and shelter. 
While the police power terrorizes only criminals, 
the money power fills strong men with the fear and 
dread of want. Government by ballot, initiative 
and referendum offers to citizens an absolute au- 
thority over their elected officials whenever they 
choose to exercise it, but the control of money kings 
is not to be taken from the families of those that 
hold it, even by death. It is passed on from father 
to son, through succeeding generations. 

A fundamental error of thought into which many 
seem to have fallen with respect to inheritances is 
the idea that the confirming of an inheritance is not 
a matter that concerns or effects an entire people. 
They think of an heir as receiving, without thinking 
of all the rest of the world as paying. 

This error of thought is the stumbling block that 



118 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

prevents men and women from thinking clearly 
upon the entire subject of unearned money of every 
kind, who, if they would stop to consider carefully, 
would instantly see that all property is created by 
somebody, and if some of it be withdrawn without 
service, it diminishes the property of all workers to 
just that extent. Thus, if a thousand men labour 
for a year to create a million bushels of wheat and 
then one-half the wheat be seized or taken without 
labour, the thousand workers lose one-half of their 
earnings. Thus, also, if any person receives a mil- 
lion dollars without labour, he does not get it out 
of the air, or from nowhere. He gets it from the 
pockets of those who earn it ; for somebody labours 
to produce each thing that men consume. 

We scrutinize with great care the direct expendi- 
ture of our government, which we feel in the form 
of taxes. If the tax rate is raised thirteen cents 
on the hundred dollars, a general outcry is raised 
and the political arena is stirred from centre to cir- 
cumference. Often we fail to re-elect a state ad- 
ministration for the sake of a few hundred thousand 
dollars not stolen or given away, but simply un- 
wisely spent. Yet a child inherits a hundred and 
sixty million dollars, another child two million, 
another a hundred million, all on the same day, 
and nowhere is the cry of justice raised save in the 



INHERITED POVERTY 119 

aching hearts of a few thousand mothers who on 
that day bring into the world children foredoomed 
to poverty, disease and crime for a vague unknown 
cause that they cannot understand. We seem ut- 
terly to ignore the fact that one million dollars re- 
ceived by a single person without service is a bur- 
den of exactly one million dollars in capital, or 
sixty thousand dollars a year in interest, upon 
somebody. This burden of unearned wealth in the 
United States is a thousand dollars per capita, on 
which an interest charge averaging sixty dollars a 
year must be indirectly paid in high prices for liv- 
ing necessities by each man, woman and child. 
The average family of five is thus contributing to 
the coffers of privilege three hundred dollars a 
year; yet the United States census of 1910 shows 
the average wage of fourteen million workmen of 
the lowest grade to be |521.00 a year. 

Think, you who seek to understand the soul of 
Christ, and to follow in his footsteps, what three 
hundred dollars a year would mean to a family that 
can live on five hundred and twenty-one ! What a 
wonderful world of education, comfort and business 
opportunity would this amazing sum open up to 
these ! The pen hesitates to prophesy the astonish- 
ing result in a country where, advanced as we are, 
not ten per cent of our children complete the reg- 



120 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

ular school course,— where hundreds of thousands 
of them work their stunted lives away in factories, 
who should be yet upon the playground, — where 
thousands of the residue find their heavy, sodden 
footsteps tending toward the house of prostitution, 
the insane asylum and the jail, before their eyes 
are even opened to the light around them, w^hile or- 
ganized charities and foundations fostered by priv- 
ilege are spending millions to prove the evident lie 
that girls and boys do not go wrong on account 
of low wages! 

Think what sunlight would be brought into 
twenty million homes by an increase of sixty per 
cent in the wages of every producer ! Think what 
an impetus would be given to schools, to churches, 
to clubs, to every broadening avenue of life and cul- 
ture! And when to this is added the freedom 
from oppression that capital and labour would ex- 
perience, with privilege out of the way, the extent 
of the blessing is inconceivable. 

In February, 1915, when an appropriation of one 
hundred and forty-eight million dollars was being 
urged in Congress through the Army and Navy 
Bill, the people held indignation meetings protest- 
ing against such expenditures even in a time of al- 
most universal war. It was pointed out that to 



INHERITED POVERTY 121 

raise one hundred and fortj-eiglit millions of dol- 
lars would require an average of one dollar and a 
half from every man, woman and child in the na- 
tion, six dollars from every family. Yet, every 
nine days, w^e as a nation contribute a sum of this 
size to heirs who labour not. Forty times this pro- 
posed military expenditure — (which was to be in- 
curred only once) — is contributed annually in in- 
terest to the children of accumulators; for the 
capitalized value of that part of the wealth of the 
United States wiiich is held by those who did not 
earn it is over one hundred billions of dollars, and 
the interest thereon is over six billions per year, 
or sixty dollars per inhabitant, counting men, 
women and children. 

Inheritance is, in one sense, the most important 
and injurious form of privilege, since all money, 
earned as well as unearned, eventually is passed 
on to the future generation by this means. As other 
forms of privilege are destroyed, the evils of in- 
heritance must disappear proportionately ; but even 
if there were no other form of privilege remaining, 
this form would be tremendous in its importance. 
It occupies a supreme position as the most glaring 
of all forms of privilege, because there is behind it 
no service whatever, and not even any attempt at 



122 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

service, or pretence of it, upon the part of the heir. 
It stands forth, impudently, as the modern expres 
sion of the Divine Right of Privilege, to take what 
it claims ^^ with or without the consent of the 
people/' 



CHAPTER XVIII 

INHERITANCE SYSTEM THE CENTRE OF 
CORRUPTION 

Great as is the sum of money that is hauded down 
to heirs during each generation, its exact amount 
is not the question at issue. That the total is tre- 
mendous none will deny, not even its beneficiaries ; 
nor will any sane person refuse to admit that the 
direct power it confers is almost beyond calcula- 
tion. But it is only after we examine its indirect 
influences that the horror of it is seen in its real 
enormity. 

Foremost among these indirect influences is the 
fact that w^ealth transmitted from generation to 
generation develops aristocracy. 

Forms of government, titles, names and symbols 
have little to do with aristocracy, when we come to 
consider its fundamental characteristics. Aris- 
tocracy is at base a mental attitude that finds ex- 
pression in the demand for privileges. It is the 
feeling of family superiority; history has yet to 
produce an example of aristocracy unsupported by 

123 



124 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

claims of superior descent. What matters it 
whether the claim be founded upon an estate or a 
throne? The evil, at its root, lies in the claim it- 
self, which is a denial of the impartial parenthood 
of God, a prenatal mortgage upon the bounties of 
Nature. 

That aristocracy is produced by the inheritance of 
money to a greater degree than by the inheritance 
of either mental or moral powers, is so plainly evi- 
dent that any argument to the contrary is gro- 
tesque, for if the son of a man of intellect or spir- 
itual insight should claim an award of money on 
account of his birth, he would become at once a 
laughing stock. 

The maintenance of any privilege depends upon 
the consent of the governed, and the heir to money 
is able to purchase a consent to his superiority of 
position, which the world has denied from time im- 
memorial to the sons of its scholars and spiritual 
leaders. An aristocrat is not appointed by him- 
self. It is the consent of others that makes his 
privilege possible, their flattery and fawning that 
constitutes his aristocracy — and the subservient 
must be paid in the mintage of the realm, C. O. D., 
net, no discount. Thrift follows fawning; the only 
true aristocrat is the one who can pay as he goes, 
and the sons of genius cannot do this. Hence when 



THE CENTRE OF CORKUPTION 125 

we speak of aristocracy in a republic we mean only 
one thing, namely, money aristocracy. 

But this is only the first of the long list of evils 
that follow in the train of inherited wealth. 

The holder of an unearned fortune, which must 
be defended at all costs, becomes the centre around 
which all manner of graft and corruption is gener- 
ated. Give to a child a million a year and the 
power to award or refuse places in industry that it 
represents, and the property of capitalist and la- 
bourer alike is not and cannot be secure. The 
child, at first through those who manage for him, 
and later upon his own motion may hire and there- 
fore does employ the ablest of lawyers to defend 
his unnatural privileges. His contribution sup- 
ports a church and lures its pastor to plead for 
charity instead of lifting his voice against the fund- 
amental causes of poverty. His endowment of a 
university colours the economic teaching of its pro- 
fessors. His campaign contributions write them- 
selves into the platform of his party. So great is 
his influence that he deceives not so much the la- 
bouring classes as the working capitalists them- 
selves who fondly imagine him to be one of them, 
though the dollars that he receives come as much 
from their bank accounts as from the pockets of 
labour. So great is the power of privileged peo- 



126 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

pie as a class that when there arises from the work- 
ing class a joung man of genius, they are able to 
employ him to plan the means and accomplish the 
results by which his own father and brothers are 
kept in poverty. 

One of the most pathetic features of the evil of 
privilege is the fact that the system is really sup- 
ported by the intelligence and capability of law- 
yers, preachers, editors and teachers w^ho, under 
just social conditions, would secure many times 
the remuneration that they now" obtain. 

Privilege is the centre of corruption and social 
decay. Living at the expense of the real creators 
of wealth, the receivers of money they do not earn, 
of whom the heir is the most conspicuous example, 
gather around them every kind and species of syc- 
ophant, from the obsequious personal servant, 
who publicly acknowledges the servility of his posi- 
tion, to the dignified professor who looks with hor- 
ror upon all theories of reform that are not a hun- 
dred years old and approved by the authorities. 

The man who receives a million a year through 
inheritance, or through any other privilege, pro- 
motes charities to hide the cancerous effect of the 
unjust system w^hereby he profits, and becomes the 
very last person in the world to aid any genuine 
reform, lest it might reach his own purse. And so 



THE CENTRE OF CORRUPTION 127 

much does lie make it to the interest of his banker, 
his college president, his lawyer and his pastor to 
defend the existing regime, that without the exer- 
cise of any intelligence above the bullying selfish- 
ness of the hog, he builds around himself a series 
of defences as impregnable as a dozen miles of 
modern trenches. 

Were it not for the multitude of lesser abuses 
that privilege protects, it would vanish quickly 
from the earth. It makes friends by dividing the 
spoil, at first liberally, but at the last with that 
criminal niggardliness that starves the defenders 
who bear the brunt of its battle. 

I have commented heretofore upon the fact that 
inheritance is a privilege, not a right; a civil in- 
stitution, not a natural act of justice. It may per- 
haps be appropriate to the consideration of the 
many related evils that group themselves about the 
inheritance of unearned money, to show here how 
governments exhibit toward the sons of the wealthy, 
a partiality they decline to show toward the sons 
of their own soldiers. 

In the instance of pensions to war heroes and 
their widows all civilized nations undertake to sup- 
port only those men who have sacrificed their earn- 
ing capacity and risked their lives for their native 
land, and their widows who have shared in their 



128 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

sacrifices. This usually extends not to their chil- 
dren except in orphanage and minority, and the 
principle is, I think, a just one, the general popu- 
lation of the state being required to support or 
pension the identical persons who have made sac- 
rifices for them, and not their adult relatives or 
descendants, who ought to support themselves. 

But in respect to the transferring of estates, an 
entirely new doctrine is introduced, that of the right 
of the heirs of men and women who have rendered 
a service to continue to receive from the state, a 
reward to which their parents only were justly en- 
titled. The inference is plainly made that the 
service of an accumulator justifies a consideration 
to his heirs which the service of a soldier does not 
justify. It requires but a flash of thought to see 
how ungrateful and illogical is this conduct of 
governments. The soldier gives up his business and 
risks his life in addition, to serve his country, 
while the accumulator stays at home and raises the 
price of food; but to the heir of the accumulator 
we grant what we are not willing to concede to the 
child of the soldier. 

Having considered the enormous extent of in- 
herited estates, the power they represent and the 
multitude of lesser abuses that gather around 
them, we now come to the final catastrophe that the 



THE CENTRE OF CORRUPTION 129 

system of inheritances inflicts upon us, in tlie class 
of owners and managers of industries that it breeds. 
We need no stronger evidence of the absurdity of 
hereditary money power than we have in the in- 
capacity of the descendants of those men Tvho were 
once famous in business. There are a few" cases like 
that of the Morgans, where great ability seems to 
have found its residence in father, son and grand- 
son. But what of the Goulds, the Astors, the Van- 
derbilts, the Goelets, the Thaws, the Brokaws? 
And what of the thousands of lesser names known 
only locally? In many cases there seems to be a 
total reversal of character and ability, if not a 
sweeping family degeneracy. How pathetic the 
misfortune that requires labour and earned capital 
not only to contribute to the support of idle heirs, 
but also to place them in positions of supreme com- 
mand in industry! The power of privilege, terri- 
ble as it is in the hands of a capable and benevolent 
despot, and sheltering as it does a myriad of smaller 
evils, becomes infinitely more dangerous w^hen it 
is passed on to incapable hands, infinitely more dif- 
ficult to overthrow when the money leaves the open 
tills of the original toiler and enters the closed 
safety deposit box of a Trust Company, where 
capable men are hired by the month to take charge 
of the life-long interests of incapable heirs. 



130 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

By permitting the continuance of this injustice, 
man is constantly subjecting himself to the most 
humiliating ordeals. He permits a person to rule 
over him, to become his employer, whom he would 
not employ as a janitor, and who, as a bookkeeper 
or salesman, would be a charge against the busi- 
ness. 

We do not permit a young man to vote until he is 
twenty-one, assuming him to be, up to that time, of 
too small experience and knowledge to have even 
this slight part in the affairs of a nation. Yet if 
he inherits a large fortune he is trusted even as a 
babe with the destinies of thousands. It is true 
that we establish a sort of regency over him, in 
the shape of a guardian, but this is only a partial 
check upon him ; for who does not know the power- 
lessness of a guardian in the case of a wilful heir? 
And what cannot that heir perform that he desires, 
his creditors knowing that he will attain the for- 
tune at twenty-one that he thus at any time pos- 
sesses in actual fact? 

To make hereditary money power consistent with 
successful business organization, the heir should 
not only be born full-grown, but also with the full 
measure of his father's ability. Even in such a 
case, however, successful business organization 
would not be consistent with justice, for justice 



THE CENTKE OF CORRUPTION 131 

would demand that sucli a man should earn his 
right to what he controls, in a fair field, and not 
have it given to him without labour. 

The evil of inheritance, insignificant in the early 
ages of the world, has attained to gigantic propor- 
tions partly because of the very insidiousness of its 
growth. But it has attained to such proportions 
that policy and interest will now dictate what rea- 
son and justice have been unable to accomplish. 
What step should be undertaken in this direction, 
a later chapter will discuss. For the present, hav- 
ing shown the overwhelming importance of the form 
of privilege known as inheritance, I shall proceed 
to examine further into the great question of human 
rights that is involved in this issue before us. 



PAET IV 

INHERITANCE EXAMINED FROM THE 

STANDPOINT OF MODERN IDEALS 

OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 



CHAPTER XIX 

NOT A PRODUCT OF CIVILIZATION BUT AN 
ACCOMPANYING EVIL 

The argument is often advanced in favour of this 
vested privilege of inheritance that it is one of the 
products of civilization and must therefore be re- 
spected and left unchanged, lest an attack upon it 
prove to be an attack upon human progress itself. 

On account of this argument it is appropriate 
to consider at this point what civilization is, and 
whether our law of inheritance promotes or op- 
poses it. 

The word " civilize '' is defined as meaning " To 
reclaim from a savage state. To instruct in arts 
and learning. To educate. To refine.'' 

The meaning of " savage " is given as " Fero- 
cious ; untamed ; rude ; brutal ; barbarous ; cruel ; in- 
human; fierce; pitiless; unmerciful; atrocious.'' 

The object of a government should be the welfare 
of its people; hence if civilization is desired, gov- 
ernments should favour such measures as promote 
the education and refinement of the largest possible 
proportion of their citizens. 

135 



136 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

This same general principle would seem to apjjly 
not only to education but also to the cultivation of 
morals and the appreciation of life's artistic and 
aesthetic comforts. That nation should be consid- 
ered most advanced in civil progress, or civiliza- 
tion, in which government is most justly admin- 
istered so as to allow the participation of all in 
the opportunities and advantages that an advanced 
state of society creates. 

Then it seems to follow quite naturally that, in 
any nation professing civilization and earnestly de- 
siring it, those citizens are most to be commended 
whose influence is devoted most conspicuously to a 
general diffusion of the arts, education and moral 
teaching, and who favour legislation that has in it 
less of the ferocious, the brutal and the inhuman. 

On the other hand if there exists in any nation 
a class of citizens whose personal or political acts 
promote brutality, crime, and disregard of human 
rights, and whose support of privilege prevents the 
spread of common education and opportunity, it 
would seem reasonable to consider them not pro- 
moters of civilization but its enemies and de- 
stroyers. 

When a single child inherits one hundred and 
sixty millions of dollars, a million children of his 
generation must earn one hundred and sixty dollars 



NOT A PRODUCT BUT AN EVIL 137 

each which they do not receive, in order to make up 
the sum paid to the favoured child ; for, as we have 
seen, wealth is not a mere nothing taken out of va- 
cancy, but it represents real property created 
mainly by the generation that consumes it. The 
adverse influence of inherited fortunes upon civil- 
ization is too marked to admit of doubt. Only ten 
per cent of the children of the United States gradu- 
ate from the common schools. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of boys and girls from ten to fourteen years 
of age are forced to abandon their schooling, by the 
poverty of their parents. They are thrown by the 
remorseless hand of privilege into factory and mine 
w^hile yet the thinning blood of childhood is cours- 
ing in their veins. Hundreds of thousands of 
young men and women who find their pay inade- 
quate because so large a proportion of the product 
of their toil is being appropriated by those who toil 
not, are forced into crime and shame. 

Hundreds of thousands die annually of tubercu- 
losis. Millions have less food than they need. 
Sixty-five per cent of the entire population of the 
United States receive less than they earn; thirty- 
three per cent receive about the equivalent of their 
earnings ; and two per cent the balance of what the 
sixty five per cent earn. 

The system that produces these horrors is not a 



138 THE ABOLITION OF mHERITANCE 

product of civilization. It is savagery and bar- 
barism, a relic of mediaeval days that civilization 
has not yet succeeded in exterminating. It exists 
in defiance of civilization, not in aid of it; and a 
perfect civilization cannot exist until the power 
to inherit wealth is entirely destroyed. 

The men in any nation who accept special priv- 
ileges and encourage the bad principle upon which 
they are founded, are not the products of the 
civilization that surrounds them. Their luxury 
Is at the cost of millions of human beings who are 
denied opportunities for moral and spiritual 
growth. The child raised in the gutter has privi- 
lege to curse for his depravity. The consumptive 
babe in the tenement dies with the stain of its blood 
upon the fingers of the privileged idler. The 
woman dragged dowai until the soul within her is 
dead must inevitably bring a heavy charge against 
the system that robs girls of what they earn, by the 
simple crime of giving over half of it outright in 
bulk to those who do not toil. 

The beneficiaries of the labour of a past genera- 
tion become the arch-foes of the labour of today, 
the champions of injustice, the defenders of starva- 
tion and moral obliquity. They are as positive 
and direct in their opposition to civilization as the 
straight line of transfer w^hereby their luxuries are 



NOT A PRODUCT BUT AN EVIL 139 

drawn from the legitiuiate rewards of labour and 
capital; for as all the wealth of nations is produced 
by labour and capital applied to the earth's re- 
sources, so all the wealth appropriated by privilege 
must necessarily be withdrawn directly from la- 
bour and capital. 

The average person, if asked to name the most 
characteristic difference between civilization and 
savagery would probably speak first of education, 
morality, art and invention which are encouraged 
by the peoples we call civilized and ignored by the 
savage. He would then enumerate the efforts of 
government to defend the person and property of 
all citizens. Having seen that the tendency of 
privilege is to discourage and prevent the wide dif- 
fusion of learning, morality and art by creating 
conditions under which their popular growth is im- 
possible, let us now discover whether privilege en- 
courages security of person and property or mili- 
tates against it. 

As to security of person, civilization has at last 
won an almost complete victory over privilege. In 
the days of Rome a majority of the population of 
the entire civilized world was bound in chattel 
slaverj'^, even white men being slaves to other white 
men. Today, in the upward march of freedom, 
chattel slavery has been completely exterminated, 



140 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

even in the case of an alien and different-coloured 
race. We have left ijractically only one important 
relic of the influence of money over personal se- 
curity. This is the power of a wealthy man to em- 
jjloy better counsel in legal causes than the poor can 
secure, so that men of wealth often escape punish- 
ment for the same offence for which a poor man 
might be imprisoned. This, coupled with our sys- 
tem of fines, whereby the rich may go free for of- 
fences that would bring a poor man into the work- 
house, is a relic of that injustice that manifested 
itself in the institution of slavery in the days when 
free men w^ere made slaves for debt, and could pur- 
chase their freedom by ransoms or payment of 
money. 

The coming of the Public Defender, who will de- 
fend those whom the State's Attorney prosecutes, 
presages the happy time when lawyers will be of- 
ficers of the court in the same sense that judges are 
today, and the equality of all before the law will 
become a fact as it is theory now. 

Personal security, with the exception just noted, 
has practically been attained ; but as to the security 
of property the influence of privilege is so great that 
we are still in a state of savagery, which civiliza- 
tio]i is now engaged in a titanic struggle to de- 
stroY, 



NOT A PRODUCT BUT AN EVIL 141 

In the transition from slavery to modern special 
privilege the fact of the appropriation of the serv- 
ices of another remains nearly the same as before. 
Only the form has changed. 

While this change in the form of appropriation 
is one of the necessary steps in the march of human 
freedom, it serves temporarily to becloud the issue 
and causes many well-meaning people to believe that 
the victory has been won. Inheritance and mon- 
opoly, however, have made the exploitation of la- 
bour nearly as easy as slavery itself did. It is no 
longer necessary to personally supervise the 
labourer, seize the product of his toil, and then go 
to the trouble and expense of feeding and clothing 
him. Through enormous inheritances and the ad- 
vantages of monopoly, privilege seizes the lion's 
share of the world's produce and power before legiti- 
mate capital and labour get a chance at it. Priv- 
ilege is always standing at the base of supplies, 
in the form of inheritance, inflated stocks, or 
monopoly of natural resources, taking its inheri- 
tance, or watered capital, or land-rent, before it 
will allow capital and labour to go to work. Privi- 
lege, in its various modern guises, saddles upon 
civilization forms of expropriation in comparison 
with which slavery was dangerous, unscientific and 
expensive. 



142 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

The power of the heir to appropriate what others 
create, must be entirely destroyed before civiliza- 
tion can boast that it has rid itself of the chief 
enemies of property rights. For the chief enemy 
of the property rights of others is he who consumes 
the property that they create without rendering 
service in return. 

In the seizure of property by those who do not 
earn it, the personality of the offender is concealed 
by a system, to the evils of which custom has blinded 
our eyes. Precedent has given to this form of ex- 
propriation the sanction of law, just as that sanc- 
tion has been given in times past, to brigandage 
and to slavery. And the importance of inherited 
wealth as one of the two real causes of poverty 
among the disinherited is concealed from many of 
the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. For 
what disinherited man did not as a child rebel 
against the inequalities of the cradle that gave to 
his boy friend the prospect of unearned millions 
from which he would be for ever barred? What 
American child ever read Mark Twain's The 
Prince and the Pauper without a hot heart and a 
burning mind? 

If civilization is the education, refinement and 
advancement of a people, it will not be attained 
until governments are able to protect the property 



NOT A PRODUCT BUT AN EVIL 143 

earned by their citizens, the use of which is neces- 
sary to such advancement. As long as the power 
to use billions of dollars' worth of property is 
each year transferred to heirs who are not earning 
it, the government is failing to protect the property 
of those who do earn it, and from whose labours the 
living of all idlers is drawn. 

Civilization instead of being promoted by our 
inheritance law, demands its removal. The heir 
is not the friend of progress. He is its enemy, a 
parasite upon both capital and labour, a hindrance 
to democracy, a foe to equality, an insurmountable 
obstacle to the property rights of every man who 
toils with hand or brain. He is not a product of 
civilization but exists in defiance of it, preying 
upon the educational, artistic and spiritual growth 
of all mankind. 



CHAPTEE XX 

ANTIQUITY NOT A DEFENCE OF WRONG 

The privilege of inheriting an estate has existed 
for thousands of years^ and its antiquity is urged 
as a reason for its continuance. 

Antiquity cannot of itself prove the right of any 
custom. Slavery called the history of the past to 
its defence and was overthrown. Monarchy calls 
upon antiquity to save it, and is rapidly passing 
away. Antiquity has failed to save the life of many 
an ancient wrong because it proves nothing but it- 
self. 

The present generation alone is responsible to it- 
self for its lavv^s and customs ; and in itself contains 
the power to change both when occasion demands. 
When reason shall prove to it the injustice of un- 
equal fortunes at the cradle, it will respond by the 
abolition of this curse upon humanity as former 
generations destroyed feudalism, the torture and 
the stake. It is out of the question to argue that 
the power to inherit has existed since Noah; for 
so also has drunkenness, prostitution, poverty and 

144 



ANTIQUITY IV^OT A DEFENCE 145 

war. The right to inherit has never existed at 
all. 

The world is progressing mightily. Men once 
claimed the right to burn heretics. We now know 
that they never had any such right. Men once 
claimed the right to property in other men. We 
now know that they have no such right and never 
did. Men once asserted, all over the world (and 
still assert in the major part of it) that they had 
a Divine Eight to rule over other men as Kings, 
and to transfer that right, by the laws of inheri- 
tance, to their heirs. We now know they had no 
such right, in the past, do not have it now, and 
never can have it. 

The claim of antiquity alone as authority for 
any act, is void. Indeed, unless it be clearly shown 
that the conditions of the ancient world were pre- 
cisely or nearly similar to the conditions of today, 
this claim of antiquity becomes an argument 
against the custom it is intended to support; for, 
if the world has radically changed in its recognition 
of liberty and democracy, the older a custom is, the 
less appropriate to modern life is it likely to be. 

The form that the spirit of liberty and justice has 
assumed has radically changed in the last two 
thousand years. The authority of the ruling class 
in the time of the Caesars was that of masters over 



146 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

slaves ; in the Middle Ages it was tliat of tlie feudal 
landlord over the serf ; in later centuries it has been 
that of the privileged over the unprivileged. The 
privilege of inheritance has during all these ages 
bound the inequalities of one generation upon the 
shoulders of the next; and has only recently come 
to its inevitable accounting. But it has come. 

Whether the inheritance of wealth was once 
necessary to encourage and revive the spirits of nat- 
urally unambitious peoples, is not now a question 
of importance. It may have been ; but it is not now, 
and serves today only as an obstacle to the moral 
improvement of heirs and a damper to the ambi- 
tion of millions of the hopelessly disinherited. 

The great difficulty with those who base the de- 
fence of wrongs upon antiquity, as has been so 
often pointed out, is that they do not go back far 
enough. Let them go back to the first man and 
the first woman, and they will find that God, when 
He created mankind and the world that was to 
minister to its needs, gave no title to property ex- 
cept the title of labour. Let them go back to nature 
and they will find no soil that will give its product 
to any one but the identical person who sows and 
gathers, no tree that yields its fruit to any hand 
but the hand that plucks it, no spring or river that 
presents its pure blessings to any but the person 



ANTIQUITY l^OT A DEFENCE 147 

who comes after it ; no bird that gives its song to 
any save those who listen; no mines that transfer 
the treasure from their dark, unfathomable depths 
save to the toiler who digs down into the bowels 
of the earth. 



CHAPTER XXI 

PRECEDENT A LEGAL, NOT A MORAL OR ECONOMIC 

DEFENCE 

But now comes the legally minded person who, be- 
ing duly sworn, deposes and says that even though 
inheritances are shown now to be wrong in prin- 
ciple, the fact that we have recognized them through 
so many centuries, " establishes the precedent " so 
firmly that to depart from it would be a violation of 
recognized right. He calls the past to bear wit- 
ness for the heir and throws about him the mantle 
of dignity and respect. 

A safe standard of the morals of a man may be 
established by the consideration as to whether he 
excuses his sins and meanness by reference to the 
cruel and barbarous laws of two hundred years ago 
or measures his aspirations and ideals by the high 
standard that is certain to be attained two hun- 
dred years hence. 

Precedent is valuable as a principle of law. It 
prevents too rapid changes in legal fiat, and gives 
to living men a reasonable idea of what the law will 

148 



PRECEDENT 149 

hereafter expect of them, by showing a decent re- 
spect to what it has heretofore required. And a 
proper deference to precedent may demand that 
even the most necessary changes be made with great 
deliberation in order that men may accommodate 
themselves thereto with as little injury as possible. 
Every reform is first discussed by good citizens 
for a considerable period of time, usually for cen- 
turies; and legalized violators of liberty have due 
warning of coming changes, and may adjust their 
lives and practices accordingly. Then when the 
changes are made, they will affect only those who 
have been stupidly blind or brutal, too blind to see 
the evil whereby they have profited, or too brutal to 
care for those who have suffered. Of these things 
I shall speak in a separate chapter at the close, 
merely reminding you here that precedent and cus- 
tom have an invariable tendency to protect estab- 
lished evils and will retard the day of judgment for 
all offenders; so that reformers need give them- 
selves little worry that they are proceeding too fast. 
Precedent always delays justice, and perhaps this 
is wise ; but the opinion that it should permanently 
stand in the way of reform is as dangerous as the 
product of the need of the reform multiplied by the 
age and universality of the precedent. Men ought 
always first to decide whether a certain proposed 



150 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

measure is right or wrong, regardless of precedent. 
Thereafter, precedent will of itself modify the speed 
with which the reform is brought about. 

If precedent is to be considered as a guide to 
action, however, it is reasonable to examine into 
all of its aspects. Let us investigate not only the 
laws regarding inheritance that have established the 
evil among us, but also the popular sentiment that 
has been opposed to these laws. Let us examine 
both sides of the question of precedent, and we shall 
see that legal precedent has been forcibly main- 
tained from the beginning, by the minority. Dur- 
ing all the centuries in which the privilege of inheri- 
tance has existed, its beneficiaries and advocates 
have been the few, — its enemies the many. Is it 
to be conceived that the millions of disinherited in 
each of the past generations have witnessed their 
own degradation without inward rebellion and 
heart burning? Is it imaginable that the poor have 
not cried out in all ages as they are crying out to- 
day, against the injustice of the system that has 
brought their children into the world as paupers 
while the children of the rich have come into it with 
royal power? 

Inheritance privileges have never been consented 
to by the unprivileged. They have been submitted 
to because no remedy appeared to be in sight. 



PRECEDENT 151 

While in some instances they have been vigor- 
ously opposed by ballot, by argument, and even by 
force, yet in the vast majority of cases, they have 
been dumbly acquiesced in by the multitude of 
human toilers; not so much through ignorance of 
their natural rights as through a lack of the means 
to secure them ; for the disinherited of all ages have 
been so hard put to it to keep clothing on their backs 
and bread in the mouths of their loved ones that 
they have been powerless. They have not only been 
deprived of their own education; they have been 
compelled to take their children from school to toil 
beyond their strength in field and factory, that the 
few might add still more to the fortunes they were 
to leave to the unborn. The parents of the poor 
have always been forced to assent to the inheri- 
tance laws whereby they and their children have 
been kept in poverty. 

But even had the parents of each generation 
given their full political and moral consent to the 
inheritance laws that pauperized their children, the 
children in the next generation would in no sense 
be obliged to assent thereto. It is no comfort, but 
rather a bitter aggravation, to a son in slavery, to 
know that his parent placed him there, even though 
in all parental love, the parent had supposed it was 
for the son's good. 



152 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

From the dawn of Creation men have rebelled 
against the privilege of inheritance. The Bible 
story of Jacob and Esau is a sad commentary upon 
its absurdity. 

For how great a " natural right " is this that 
can be traded for a mess of pottage? And later 
confirmed by a Goat-skin fraud? And, still later, 
when discovered, cannot be remedied? What bet- 
ter conduct could be expected of such a thief as 
the author of the celebrated mandrake scheme, is 
a mystery to me ; but the point of interest here is the 
complete demonstration in this scriptural story, 
of the entire lack of '^ natural right " associated 
with the early conception of the inheritance privi- 
lege. But the fraud of Jacob shall be overthrown 
by the force of Esau, and the children of men shall 
again attain the equality of children of God — for 
these are the words at the end of that hateful story 
in the thirty-seventh chapter of Genesis — this the 
prophecy of the patriarch Isaac to Esau his de- 
frauded son, — " and by the sword shalt thou live 
and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to 
pass when thou shalt have the dominion that thou 
shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." 

And Esau said, " Then will I slay my brother 
Jacob.'' 

Jesus Christ in one of his parables gave an illus- 



PKECEDENT 153 

tration of the husbandmen who, seeing the heir com- 
ing, said, " Lo, here is the heir ; come let us kill 
him," thus showing the feeling of hatred that has 
existed in all ages against the monstrous favourit- 
ism of inheritance laws. The Bible gives us a fair 
picture of the feelings and sentiments of men for 
several thousand years, reflecting as it does the cry 
of the poor for justice; and there is not a reference 
to Heaven between its covers that does not picture 
the future world as a place where that equal justice 
shall be given to all which is denied them here. 
Heaven is pictured as a place where all w^ho dwell 
therein shall inherit equally the kingdom prepared 
from the foundation of the earth ; where no favour- 
itism will be shown even to the faithful sons of 
Zebedee themselves; and this desire for the place 
of justice expressed the outcry of the people for 
thousands of years just as today it expresses the 
deepest and fiercest longing of the human heart. 

It is the longing for a chance at happiness, the 
longing for peace, for contentment, for rest, for 
a fair opportunity to obtain the full reward of 
honourable toil. 

If history be called upon to give its evidence, it 
will show ninety and nine who have protested 
against privilege to every one who has been con- 
tented with it. If we desire, therefore, to conform 



154 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

to the wishes of the majority of the dead, we shall 
unhesitatingly declare that precedent itself, when 
considered from the standpoint of popular opinion, 
authorizes the destruction of the iniquity of inher- 
ited estates. 

The authority of legal precedent is based not upon 
the claim that the majority have always preferred 
that heirs should receive property without labour, 
but rather upon the fact that the minority, who 
have had power, have enacted this crime into law. 
Here we find, as those always can who search earn- 
estly, the fallacy of the claim that precedent favours 
privilege in inheritance. This fallacy is the idea 
that law expresses popular opinion. It does not. 
Popular opinion is opposed to the laws in favour 
of privileged heirs. One by one the laws of privi- 
lege have been destroyed — slavery has gone^ mon- 
archy is going y and inheritance will follow. 

"When we consider the matter aright, precedent 
disappears as an argument against reform, and 
points the way clearly to a continuation of the for- 
ward march of democracy. 

The time and place of the birth of a child cannot 
justly be considered as affecting his natural rights, 
nor can his parentage. Every boy or girl born into 
the world derives its existence from the Divine 
Creator of all. The world is as new to that boy or 



PRECEDENT 155 

girl as it was to Adam, and his natural right to it 
and dominion over it must be precisely the same 
as that of the first man who ever came into it. 

As government conforming to principle is the 
noblest of social institutions, so government by prec- 
edent, when the two are not in accord, is the most 
vile. In cases too numerous to be counted, the 
precedent ought to be considered a warning rather 
than a thing to be imitated or followed. As to in- 
heritance laws, no thoughtful person can deny that 
they have not only created gross inequalities of 
birth, but they have perpetuated and increased 
them in the family line; and that times without 
number, heirs fight against the very principles for 
which the earner of the original fortune stood. In- 
heritances keep alive the feudal spirit of the past; 
they form the centre around which multitudes of 
lesser evils gather ; and they have, in all ages, stood 
alone as the one class or form of privilege in defence 
of which the beneficiary does not even claim for 
himself any merit or desert. Certainly the prec- 
edent of laws favouring heirs, stained as it is with 
blood and tears, poverty and crime, ought to oper- 
ate as a warning instead of an example, to the 
world of today. The backs of the disinherited are 
bent with the blood-stained burden of cradle in- 
equalities ; and for the struggle to throw this burden 



156 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

off, a precedent will be found in the fair fields of 
Runnymede, the hallowed walls of Faneuil Hall, 
and every other spot made immortal by the flam- 
ing tongues of the voiceless dead whose love of lib- 
erty and equality still lives in the hearts of men 
and finds an echo in their ballots. But in this 
struggle let it be ever remembered that hating ty- 
rants is not the same as hating tyranny. Economic 
wrongs demand fundamental remedies; it is the 
system that must be reformed, and the remedy is 
not hate, but education. An idea as old as Abra- 
ham must be supplanted by a principle of justice 
that antedates the everlasting hills. Civilization, 
to produce temporary progress, has for ages made 
use of the principle of inheritance, as for ages she 
utilized the principle of slavery. Each, in its time 
served a purpose, and each in its turn produced evils 
greater than the temporary benefits it secured. As 
chattel slavery, now for ever gone, was forced to 
yield to a better economic system, so inheritance 
by gift is yielding today, and must give way to- 
morrow, to an economic system under which each 
child born into the world will enter it with a fair 
start and an equal chance under the law, unhandi- 
capped by the unearned wealth of hereditary 
princes of trade or leisure; and the less we are 



PRECEDENT 157 

moved by hatred for individuals, the more clearly 
shall we apprehend the single, scientific means 
whereby the victory over an unjust system shall be 
won. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THE PROPERTY OF 

THE DEAD 

Having disposed, as I believe, of the claims of those 
who do not labour, to the property of the dead, I 
wish now to declare the rightful ownership of that 
property. 

No value is or can be created except by the ap- 
plication of labour to natural resources. As has 
already been shown, nature does not offer to man- 
kind even so little a gift as a cup of pure water 
without imposing the condition that labour must 
extend its arm to secure it; and in all the major 
operations of industry, capital, which is stored-up 
labour, must co-operate. The value of labour and 
earned capital is, in all cases, personal and in- 
dividual to him who works, and his inalienable 
right to this value is no longer disputed by any con- 
siderable body of people. 

The value of natural resources, however, is social 
in its nature, being created by the existence of popu- 
lation. It belongs to all. It is the common gift 
of God to mankind. 

158 



THE PROPERTY OF THE DEAD 159 

Now, while both the individual vvorker and the 
social organization exist, they have the right to 
contract with each other, to allow to the worker the 
value of all he creates from natural resources dur- 
ing the period of their partnership, that is, during 
the period that the worker is capable of enjoying 
the product. After the conclusion of that period, 
nature has provided that he shall enjoy it no longer, 
and that he shall have no means whatever of man- 
aging it personally or, indeed, of even expressing 
his opinion with regard to it. 

The natural title to the use of property being the 
title of labour and earned capital, no person living 
later can have such natural title after the death of 
him who laboured, and expediency as well as jus- 
tice and common sense would seem to indicate that 
the title should revert to his partner in production, 
the social organization.^ Indeed, unless this be 
done, the social organization must deny to others 
what it originally granted to him, viz: the entire 
value of their labour. 

In geometry there is a rule known as the reductio 
ad ahsurdimiy whereby the falsity of a proposition 
is shown by following it out until it has become at 
last reduced to an ahsurdity. The claim of any liv- 

1 See Thomas Jefferson's statement on this point, p. 37, 
Note 1. 



160 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

ing man to a right in an estate he does not earn may 
thus be reduced to an absurdity by following it out. 
until it be clearly shown that when any government 
guarantees to its citizens the security of all property 
they create^ while at the same time it grants to 
others without labour a part of what is being cre- 
ated, it has granted two titles to the same thing, 
only one of which can possibly be valid. 

The right to control any nation must reside in 
the living generation affected in that nation. The 
maker of a gift of property to another does what, 
for himself and for the generation consenting 
thereto, he has a right to do if his gift be not in- 
jurious to the rights and welfare of others; but 
when he makes a will decreeing what shall be done 
with his property when he is dead, he assumes 
another right which neither he nor his generation 
possesses, — that of binding posterity to the third 
and fourth generation, or for that matter to the 
end of time itself ; giving property to one who did 
not earn it, " to him, his heirs, executors, adminis- 
trators and assigns, for ever," and thereby prevent- 
ing the workers of the next generation from secur- 
ing all the result of their labour. 

Often the laws whereby property is acquired are 
wrong for the generation for which they were made, 
to say nothing of the next, yet under our inheritance 



THE PROPERTY OP THE DEAD 161 

law, property earned a hundred years before by 
means that would violate every modern idea of jus- 
tice and decency, is jDreserved intact and respected 
by people who should think of its accumulator with 
loathing and disgust. 

But even were the property laws wise in the gen- 
eration by which they were made, the right to per- 
petuate the estate they produced is entirely lack- 
ing; and the right of one legislature to make a law 
respecting inheritances can in no way affect the 
equal right of a subsequent legislature to modify 
or abolish it. 

There never has, does not now, and never can ex- 
ist a legislature, supreme court, or any other body 
of men with power to bind a succeeding generation ; 
and all laws so intended, save as they appeal to the 
self interest and wisdom of the coming generation, 
are necessarily subject to change, since the new ar- 
rivals upon earth are and must ever be the masters 
of their own destiny. The existence of people with 
demands to be satisfied, is what gives all things 
value, and no value can attach to anything except 
by virtue of a demand for that thing. It is only 
the living who give value to things that can be ex- 
pressed by money or price. The power of one gen- 
eration over the generation to follow it is non-ex- 
istent; and is as ridiculous as an assertion of its 



162 THE ABOLITION OP INHERITANCE 

power over tlie generation that preceded it. No 
assertion of liiiman power is more blasphemous and 
absurd than the impudence of attempting to govern 
beyond the grave. Each generation creates its own 
property rights, and the heritage of the past must 
be regarded as an addition to the resources of na- 
ture, to which all mankind are entitled to access for 
use. 

Inheritance of property, to the extent that it en- 
ables the heir to demand the services of others, 
without rendering an equivalent service in ex- 
change, is an application of the principle of human 
slavery; for to the extent that the workers of the 
world must labour without sufficient pay, it is slav- 
ery whether the service is rendered to an individual 
taskmaster or to an industrial machine the profits 
of which are appropriated by privilege. Laws of 
inheritance are the chattel deeds of slavery upon 
a wholesale and class plan, — making entire fam- 
ilies, or classes of people, the servants of others, 
whose personal identity is concealed in a system, 
but who, in the United States, will secure without 
labour that 60 per cent of the wealth of the nation 
that their parents have accumulated while a labour- 
ing force equal to 321/2 times their number secure 
5 per cent of it, — one heir thus averaging as much 
reward as 390 workers. 



THE PROPERTY OF THE DEAD 163 

All just title to property must come through the 

labour of the identical person enjoying it, — not his 
ancestors. Only a small amount of intelligence and 
common sense is required to see that though laws 
made in one generation often continue in force 
thereafter, yet they derive their legality not from 
the mandate of the i)ast, but from the consent of, 
the living present. When a law is not repealed it 
is considered as remaining in force, 3^et the right 
to repeal it exists in the living generation and can- 
not be taken away. 

The right to declare a man the heir of wealth 
must fall upon those who are called upon to bear 
the actual burden of his support. These are not 
the dead, but the living, for neither idlers nor 
workers live upon stored-up food. What is eaten, 
worn, and used today is being created today — and 
no dead man can decree that his descendants shall 
be fed, clothed and sheltered without labour. " He 
that will not work, neither shall he eat." 

We have seen that the rightful ownership of 
property is inseparable from the labour that creates 
it, and that each generation supplies all its own 
w^ants. We have also seen how it follows that, 
when a vast inheritance is bequeathed, the thing 
that is transferred from father to son is not actual 
property that he has created (except to an almost 



164 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

negligible degree) but a power to command the use 
of food, clothing, shelter and services that are in 
the future to be created. To the extent that this 
fact is clearly conceived, it must be also evident to 
all who give it thought, that the generation to which 
the son applies to enforce his father's decree that 
he be supported, must have the right to determine 
whether it will accede to the demand, or decline to 
obey. If a sentiment of respect for the parent 
urges them to accede, a like sentiment should urge 
that they support by similar donations the children 
and relatives of men who served the former genera- 
tion as its public officials, pastors, priests, teachers, 
inventors and in a hundred other capacities more 
honourable and more useful than the accumulation 
of a surplus in a bank; and a further extension of 
the same sentiment would decree that they pension 
the sons of the soldiers, and of the labourers whose 
toil in field, furrow and ditch brought to the com- 
ing generation the most substantial of all the 
purely economic benefits that it received. 

If reason be accepted as our guide we shall heed 
the dying wish of the penniless missionary or the 
bed-ridden hospital surgeon as freely as we obey 
the commands of the accumulator; and we shall 
realize, in any event, that the disposition of the 
property created jointly by the worker and the 



THE PROPERTY OF THE DEAD 165 

social organization in which he laboured, is both 
by right and by pov/er, in the hands of the social 
organization when its partner in the transaction 
has passed on to that undiscovered country where 
the light of the eternal morning is shed upon high 
and low with an equal radiance of glory, and where 
there shall be no more tears, neither sorrow nor 
crying. 



PART V 
INHERITANCE AND SENTIMENT 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS FOR CHILDREN 

I HAVE heretofore considered the question of in- 
heritance from the standpoint of human rights and 
economic justice. It is not upon this view of the 
question, however, that the advocates of inherited 
wealth base their strongest assertions. Admitting 
the legal right of labour and earned capital to all 
their joint product, and hence compelled to concede 
the economic wrong of granting a large portion of 
this product to those who do not participate in 
production, they fall back upon the defence of senti- 
ment. They assert that the father labours for the 
child as the animal fights for its young; and that 
any attempt to remedy the manifest evils of vast 
inherited estates, is a violation of the right of the 
parent to live and die for those he loves. 

This view of human rights is of the utmost im- 
portance. If it be true that men do labour for the 
purpose of providing for the future wants of their 
offspring, it is vital to a correct understanding of 
our problem that we first consider how many men 
and women there are in the world to whom the wel- 

169 



170 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

fare of their offspring is a motive power in life. 
I assert that there is not to be found so much as 
one natural parent in the world to whom the wel- 
fare of his young is not one of the deepest consid- 
erations of life. Go where you will, from the palace 
of the king to the hut of the peasant, from the cap- 
tain of industry to the miner digging hidden trea- 
sure from the bowels of the earth, and you will 
find men who live from sunrise to sunset every day 
with the inspiring vision of wife and child before 
them, sustaining their every effort and lightening 
every moment of toil. Huns, Slavs, Chinese, the 
stokers of ships, the tillers of the soil, Europeans, 
Americans, Catholics, Turks, Baptists, janitors, 
salesmen, day-labourers — there can be found no 
class of people to whom the voice of the child cry- 
ing in hunger is not the voice of God, justifying even 
crime itself, if only the child may live. Seek the 
world over and you shall not find, save among the 
demented and degenerate, mothers who will not sell 
even virtue itself to save their young. The perpet- 
uation and preservation of species is the strongest 
instinct in life, more powerful than self-preserva- 
tion, more universal than love. No race can be 
found in which it is lacking, no sound-minded in- 
dividual who does not possess it. It is one of the 
common traits and possessions of mankind. 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS ITl 

Any theory, therefore, that has reference to the 
service of parents for their children, if it be based 
upon either justice or sentiment, must of necessity 
consider all the parents of all the children. It is 
not sufficient to observe that the two per cent who 
fare sumptuously, v/ork for their children (though, 
as has been shown, an increasingly large propor- 
tion of these do not really work at all), but it must 
be borne in mind that all other human beings also 
labour for the benefit of those they have brought 
into the world. 

With this fact before us, what a vf onderful light 
is thrown upon the whole matter ! We see now that 
we must not only respond to the summons of senti- 
ment in considering some cases, but that we must 
heed it in all cases. We see that when a farmer 
or a " renter '' or a mechanic has spent his entire 
life working for freedom and a fighting chance for 
his children, we must not violate the principles of 
humanity by forcing his loved ones to work for 
heirs at half the wage to which they are entitled. 
We see that when the widow of a labourer is forced 
to go to work in a factory to earn bread enough for 
her babes, we wrong her when w^e bestow the fac- 
toiy itself, without labour, upon an heir. We see 
children robbed of their birthright by other chil- 
dren. We see girls forced into factories at wages 



172 THE ABOLITION OF INHEKITANCE 

reduced fifty per cent, to pay dividends to other 
girls. We see boys torn from the public schools 
by the necessity of supplementing their parents' 
earnings, to pay the interest on bonds owned by 
other boys. And in this picture, through it all 
and above it all, clear as the gaunt outlines of pov- 
erty itself, we see the haggard faces of men and 
women who live and labour for their children, 
whose sole legacy to them will be the memory of 
how they yearned to give them a fair start and an 
equal chance, but could not ; because they, too, were 
paying half their earnings to the sons of their 
fathers' employers. 

No fallacy is more clear than that of those de- 
fenders of inheritances who postulate their argu- 
ment upon the sentiment of parental affection with- 
out taking into consideration all the parents and 
all the children in the world. The affection of the 
wealthy for their young is no greater than the af- 
fection of the remainder of mankind for theirs. 
Indeed, it can be much doubted that it is as great, 
when we consider how customary it is for nurses 
to take mothers' places among this class of people, 
and when we bear in mind the bitter and sometimes 
even criminal attempts that heirs so often make 
to secure money sooner or in larger amounts than 
the parent himself desires to give it. 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 173 

But it is asserted that men would lose their de- 
sire to accumulate more than they themselves need, 
should the privilege of transferring it to their heirs 
be withdrawn. 

To this I first reply that, in the cases in which it 
would be true, it would be a great economic bless- 
ing to the world. 

When a man continues to labour past the time 
when he has laid aside enough for the needs of him- 
self and wife and minor children, he does it either 
because he loves his work, or because he loves 
power, or because he desires to accumulate. 

If he labours because he loves his work, or be- 
cause he loves power, he will continue to labour no 
matter what becomes of his money when he dies.^ 

1 Certainly no man could be found more appropriately fitted 
by personal experience to render a fair opinion upon this sub- 
ject than Andrew Carnegie. He says : 

" The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large 
estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a 
salutary change in public opinion. . , . The budget presented 
in the British Parliament the other day proposed to increase 
the death duties ; and, most significant of all, the new tax is to 
be a graduated one. Of all forms of taxation this seems the 
wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, 
the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the 
community from which it chiefly came, should be made to feel 
that the community, in the form of the State, cannot thus be 
deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at 
death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish million- 
aire's unworthy life. 



174 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

The State's refusal to transfer it when lie dies will 
not affect Ms work and neither his own business 
nor the community will suffer. If his interest in 
his business is the mere desire to accumulate, both 
the business and the public will be benefited by his 
retirement. Such a man will pinch and grind his 
employes and his customers while he ought to be 
advancing and improving his business. Whether 
he is seeking to accumulate money for himself or for 
his children, he is the type of man who is not look- 
ing forward. He is as much of a detriment to the 
world as the lover of his work is a benefit. 

I am of the opinion that there are few of this 

It is desirable that nations should go much further in this 
direction. Indeed, it is difficult to set bounds to the share of a 
rich man's estate which should go at his death to the public 
through the agency of the State, and by all means such taxes 
should be graduated, beginning at nothing upon moderate sums 
to dependents, and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell, 
until of the millionaire's hoard as of Shylock's at least. 

" The other half 
Comes to the privy coffer of the State." 
This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to 
attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which 
is the end that society should always have in view, as being by 
far the most fruitful for the people. Nor need it he feared that 
this policy would sap the root of enterprise and render men 
less anxious to accumulate, for, to the class whose ambition is 
to leave great fortunes and be talked about after their death, 
it w^ill attract even more attention and, indeed, be a somewhat 
nobler ambition, to have enormous sums paid over to the State 
from their fortunes." 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 175 

latter class, in comparison with the former. Most 
business men of vast capabilities love their work and 
the power of their position too much to quit work- 
ing because they have enough for their own needs ; 
and the business men are not different in this re- 
spect, I think, from artists, writers and profes- 
sional men of all kinds. To imagine a President 
of the United States who would refuse to do his 
work unless the position he holds be promised to his 
son, is no more absurd than to imagine that any 
good soap manufacturer would go off in a rage and 
quit the presidency of his company because the peo- 
ple no longer agree to turn his fortune over to 
his son. 

There is no great money centre in the world, and 
no manufacturing city of any considerable size that 
does not furnish noteworthy examples of old bache- 
lors and childless widowers working long after their 
own fortunes are a hundred times the size that their 
personal necessities require. 

These are the words of Charles M. Schwab, multi- 
millionaire head of the Bethlehem Steel Corpora- 
tion. " I'm not working for money. IVe made 
more money now than I'll ever spend. I'm not 
working for my children. I haven't anj. Vm 
working for the sake of my work. It's my child, — 
my all. Not long ago I had a fabulous offer for 



176 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

my business. I refused it. What would I do with- 
out my work?'^ What Schwab says is common- 
sense. Any child can realize its truth. No man 
alive works past the million mark because his chil- 
dren need the money — and the claim to the con- 
trary is merely a desperate effort upon the part of 
the defenders of inheritances to frighten the world 
into believing that its great masters, its leaders, its 
geniuses, will throw away their pens, destroy their 
factories, and sulk like Achilles in his tent before 
Troy, unless their accumulations be passed on to 
their heirs. 

Yet even if it were true that men of great talents 
would abandon their business enterprises if their 
sons were no longer to be allowed to inherit vast 
power, this would be far from an unmixed evil. 
They would be free to devote their time and atten- 
tion to the public service, and the positions of hon- 
our and trust that are today occupied by men of 
small capabilities, or worse, would tomorrow be 
filled by men of power. 

Moreover, the coming generation, for whose sake 
these vast fortunes are said to be accumulated, 
would be morally benefited to an extent hardly to 
be conceived, were the heirs to realize from birth 
that instead of being the favourites of a corrupt 
system of inherited power, they were to be tried in 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 177 

the crucible of service, in common with the re- 
mainder of mankind.^ They would indeed be still 
the beneficiaries of their parents' abilities to an 
enormous extent. They would have better educa- 

1 The evil results of inheritance upon the heirs themselves is 
thus stated by John Stuart Mill : 

" The claims of children are of a different nature ; they are 
real and indefeasible. But even of these I venture to think that 
the measure usually taken is an erroneous one ; what is due 
to children is in some respects underrated, in others, as it ap- 
pears to me, exaggerated. One of the most binding of all obli- 
gations, that of not bringing children into the vrorld unless 
they can be maintained in comfort during childhood, and 
brought up with a likelihood of supporting themselves when of 
full age, is both disregarded in practice and made light of 
in theory in a manner disgraceful to human intelligence. On 
the other hand, when the parent possesses property, the claims 
of the children upon it seem to be the subject of an opposite 
error. Whatever fortune a parent may have inherited, or still 
more may have acquired, I cannot admit he owes to his children, 
merely because they are his children to leave them rich with- 
out the necessity of any exertion. I could not admit it, even if 
to be so left were always, and certainly, for the good of the 
children themselves. But this is in the highest degree uncer- 
tain. It depends on individual character. Without supposing 
extreme cases, it may be affirmed that in a majority of in- 
stances the good not only of society but of the individuals, would 
be better consulted by bequeathing to them a moderate, than 
a large provision. This, which is a commonplace of moralists, 
ancient and modern, is felt to be true of many intelligent pa- 
rents, and would be acted upon much more frequently, if they 
did not allow themselves to consider less what really is, than 
what will be thought by others to be advantageous to the chil- 
dren." 

— J. S. Mill, PoUtical Economy, Bk. 2, Ch. 2, p. 218. 



178 THE ABOLITION OF INHEKITANCE 

tion, better surroundings, better food, a greater op- 
portunity'^ for physical improvement, and superior 
advantages of every possible kind; but they would 
not expect to inherit vast estates and would realize 
the necessity of becoming what their physical and 
mental stock ought to produce — real leaders of 
men. 

They would not pity themselves. They would 
not consider themselves deprived of anything, for 
they would be educated not to expect advantages 
past the age of their majority. The first generation 
of princes and noblemen's sons in France no doubt 
thought themselves " deprived '' of power when the 
privilege of inheriting titles was taken away; but 
the sons of presidents, governors and senators in 
the United States today do not consider themselves 
" deprived '' of their fathers' power. They have 
never expected to receive it. 

I stand for sentiment — for the tenderest senti- 
ment in life, the sentiment of the uncounted poor 
whose children are disinherited to create positions 
of power for the children of accumulators. I stajid 
for the sentiment of broken-hearted widows who 
watch their defenceless offspring go down into ig- 
norance, poverty and crime, unable to leave tub and 
factory and the menial services performed for others 
long enough to minister to the bodies and souls of 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 1T9 

those they love. I stand for the sentiment that the 
sons of a hundred farm renters shall not be de- 
prived of their small inheritances in order that the 
sons of one farm speculator may have a large es- 
tate ; that a million workers shall not stand for ever 
near the bread-line to furnish luxury to a thousand 
heirs who labour not. I show you the hungry 
mouths of the disinherited, the uneducated minds 
of children torn from school, the bleeding hands of 
girls who work in factories, the hopeless faces of 
the parents of the poor. I show you these not as 
one asking for them charity, but as one demanding 
that they, with the working capitalists who co- 
operate with them, be no longer compelled to do 
one hundred per cent of the world's work for forty 
per cent of its wealth, in order to pay the remaining 
sixty per cent to idlers. 

This I assert to be a human right,- — that all 
workers are entitled to all reward ; and all transfer 
of money without service, in whatsoever form such 
transfer takes, is a direct violation of that right. 

The case against inheritance is stronger than can 
be expressed in the mere terms of justice, all con- 
clusive though these are. It is founded and estab- 
lished upon the tenderest sentiment of the human 
heart, viz., the right of all parents to leave to all 
children the inheritance of opportunity that is 



180 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

theirs by the unchangeable law of God; and the 
right of all children to a fair chance and an equal 
start. 

It is manifest that the property of the past gen- 
eration must be transferred either to the children 
of the rich, or to the children of the poor, or to both. 

If an appeal be made to the sentiment of favourit- 
ism alone, it would seem fitting that the children 
of the poor be so endowed or pensioned rather than 
the children of the rich, since the latter, during the 
life- time of the parents, enjoyed so many more ad- 
vantages of comfort, culture and opportunity than 
did the former. But no such sentiment should ac- 
tuate a just and generous people. Any decision 
as to the apportionment of the accumulated wealth 
of the past generations should be based upon con- 
siderations of justice and universal love. In ac- 
cordance with these considerations all lovers of the 
right must put forth every possible effort to secure 
both to the rich and to the poor that exact propor- 
tion of the benefits of industry that is represented 
by the efforts and ability of each. And this must 
not be in proportion to the effort and ability of 
parents, but in proportion to the effort and ability 
of the identical person to whom the reward is 
granted. 

It is sometimes urged that the refusal of govern- 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 181 

ment to transfer fortunes to heirs would have such 
an effect upon our social organization as to actually 
destroy family unity and devotion; that it would 
make a man's relation to his children little different 
from his attitude toward all the other children in 
the world. 

To the extent that such a condition w^ould ac- 
tually deepen the interest of great business men in 
the condition of those about them, this state of 
affairs would be of great encouragement to those 
who love mankind and wish it well. But as to its 
lessening the power or tenderness of the family 
bond, no statement could possibly be more illogical 
and false. 

The love of children for their parents is not based 
upon money considerations. To the extent that de- 
sire for an inheritance influences the conduct of a 
young man or woman toward his parents, the exist- 
ence of the coveted estate has killed the natural 
emotions of affection that should exist in the mind 
of the heir. While it is true that children in their 
minority learn to love their parents because of their 
parents' daily sacrifices in their behalf, the situa- 
tion changes the moment the child begins to base 
his affections upon the expectation of a future in- 
heritance. If this were not true it would be at 
once manifest that if the expectation of an estate 



182 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

were a cause of filial love, the lack of that prospect 
would be an equally powerful cause»for hatred ; and 
thus the xjroposition would instantly disprove itself, 
for we know that the children of the poor do not 
hate their parents, but on the contrary, love them 
with a surpassing devotion. 

No love is genuine that is based upon the expecta- 
tion of pay. Such a feeling is not love but the pros- 
titution of it. It is an insult to the purity of the 
sacred sentiment that binds families together, 
unites the hearts of all mankind, and brings the 
human into communion with the divine. 

Do American children hate their parents because 
their parents cannot leave them monarchial power? 
No ; and they would not hate them if they could not 
leave them money. Do the offspring of the poor 
despise the father whose hands are worn with toil? 
I venture the opinion that parents are best beloved 
in that great class of families known as the middle 
class, where children are well brought up to their 
majority, but expect little or nothing in the way 
of an inheritance. 

It is the existence of great wealth that makes 
deep poverty necessary; and the elimination of 
large inheritances would lessen the number of the 
idle rich at the same time and for the same reason 
that it v/ould decrease the multitude of idle poor. 



THE SENTIMENT OF PAEENTS 183 

The tramp and the millionaire idler are twin mani- 
festations of the same economic evil, and they will 
disappear together with the destruction of privi- 
leges, among which the privilege of inheritance is 
most conspicuous and vicious. 

There is and can be no proper objection to great 
wealth as such. No reasonable person or group of 
persons ever have objected or ever will object to the 
accumulation of fortunes no matter how large, pro- 
vided they are not amassed through privilege. Nor 
indeed would many object to privilege itself if 
the amounts were small. But fortunes amassed 
through privilege have become so large as to be the 
most serious menace to civilization that has ever 
existed in the world's history ; and the privilege of 
inheritance is today producing fortunes of such vast 
extent that the actual measurement of them is im- 
possible. The poverty these produce not only in- 
directly, but directly too, can by no means be esti- 
mated. 

Those who seek to defend the passing down of 
estates in the family line, appeal to the parental 
sentiment of a few as against the parental senti- 
ment of the many. They ignore the ninety-eight 
per cent in their eagerness to favour the two per 
cent; a situation as un-sentimental, as dry of real 
compassion, as it is unjust and unwise. But when 



184 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

we consider how far afield of common sense they 
are led in other respects than mere percentages, we 
wonder at the simplicity of mind of those who be- 
lieve them. 

There are two aspects of the case that these de- 
fenders overlook, either purposely or through bias 
of mind. The first is the large number of estates 
that do not pass from parents to children, but to 
collateral heirs. The second is the still larger per- 
centage of estates that were not even accumulated 
by the parents who gave them, but by ancestors dead 
half a century, or two centuries, before either the 
parents or the children who figure in the inheritance 
were born. 

As to the former, an examination of the probate 
records of any state will suffice for all the rest, to 
show what an amazing percentage of the estates of 
dead men pass not to sons and daughters, but to 
distant relatives, to whom none of the usual argu- 
ments in defence of inheritances apply. 

As to the latter, exact figures are not easily avail- 
able, but it requires only a little thought to gain 
from general knowledge a realization of its extent. 
In European countries fortunes of international 
importance have been handed down in the family 
line for centuries. The Marlborough fortune, the 
Westminster fortune, and dozens of similar family 



THE SENTIMENT OF PARENTS 185 

fortunes in England are tlioroughly familiar even 
to the readers of ordinary fiction or newspapers. 
There are not lacking family estates that are over a 
thousand years old. What sentiment can explain 
or justify such an unthinkable relationship between 
a present day Duke, and an ancestor forty genera- 
tions removed? Between a twentieth century 
count and a twelfth century nobleman of different 
name, different religion, different language and in 
some cases, even different colour? 

When we consider, then, that not over two per 
cent of our people have large estates to leave, and 
that in a large proportion of these cases the estates 
are not earned by the father of the heir, the force 
of the appeal based on the father's sentiment as a 
justification for the son's privilege is greatly di- 
minished; and when we thereafter remember the 
rights of the remaining ninety-eight per cent, it dis- 
appears altogether. In its stead comes to us the 
burning hope that in the days to come we shall see 
the sunlight of new mornings, when all children 
born into the world shall have an equal chance to 
obtain the rewards of toil. If we are believers in 
God as the Creator of all, we must consider all 
children as coming directly from Him, with an 
equal claim to divine origin and an equal right of 
access to Nature's bounty. To consider it other- 



186 THE ABOLITION OF INHEKITANCE 

wise would be to construct a God more unjust and 
inhuman than we would be ourselves. God gave no 
rights to Adam that He did not intend for all of 
Adam's posterity alike. To imagine a God approv- 
ing the bestowal of a hundred millions upon one of 
His children, and for that purpose necessarily tak- 
ing it from the rest, is as fjreposterous as it is unfair. 
The right of every child to the full reward of his 
own industry is as true of the children of this gen- 
eration as of those of any preceding one. It would 
be impossible for any child to come to earth without 
that right ; for the coming of that child would mark 
and commemorate the sanction of slavery by the 
Author of freedom, — the assassination of virtue by 
the God of purity — the approval of crime by the 
righteous Judge of all the earth. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

CONCERNING SUPERIOR NATURAL ENDOWMENTS 

It is frequently said that since God created men 
and women of diverse gifts; some strong, others 
weak; some talented, others dull; some beautiful, 
others ugly; some ambitious, others of slovenly 
mind ; — it is presumptuous in man to seek for 
equality in inheritance when God himself has de- 
nied it in natural endowment. 

I think those who advance this apology for injus- 
tice omit from their thought the idea that, in na- 
ture, the advantage given to any one person is never 
given at the cost of another. My friend is not weak 
because I am strong, not dull because I am talented, 
not slovenly of mind because I am ambitious. I 
detract nothing from his strength of body, mind or 
spirit. The man who is blind was not made thus 
because I can see; nor does my acquisition of knowl- 
edge injure the mental faculties of any other person. 

In economic relations, however, precisely the op- 
posite condition exists. No set of men can receive 
what they do not earn without securing it directly 

187 



188 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

from the fund that has been earned by some one 
else. What privilege gets, it obtains from the 
pockets of labour and earned capital. Hence every 
dollar secured by inheritance is taken directly from 
the gross production of living persons. 

Physical health, intellectual power, and spiritual 
graces are the gifts of God. They are unlimited in 
quantity. They are given to those who have them 
without taking anything away from those who have 
them not. 

But the property of the earth is the reward of 
the labour of men. It is limited in quantity to pre- 
cisely what men produce by their own effort. 
When it is received by those who have not earned 
it, it is necessarily taken from those who have. 

To argue for inequality of opportunity under 
human laws because a diversity of natural gifts has 
been granted by divine law, is like arguing for 
monarchy or robbery for the same reason. God 
created superior natural advantages in some men, 
bestowing them as free gifts without injury to 
others. But man cannot create advantages with- 
out labour, and the man who, not having created 
these advantages, arrogates to himself the right to 
bestow them, is doing more than claiming the au- 
thority of God. He is claiming the authority of 
an unjust God for even in the bestowal of natural 



SUPEKIOR NATURAL ENDOWMENTS 189 

gifts of body, mind and soul, though God awards 
them in varying degree, He never subsequently gives 
to one the improvements accomplished by another. 
The increase that I bring about in my own physical 
strength, brain power, or spiritual comprehension, 
can never be taken from me by another. If God's 
example is to be set up before us as a model for our 
actions, certainly nothing is clearer than that God 
intends for every man to have the full product of 
his toil ; for in all the functions of body, mind and 
soul. He has made it impossible for one to steal 
the faculties of another. Each of us must cultivate 
his own personal power. It was evidently the in- 
tent of the Creator that reward and effort should be 
synonymous terms. But we have builded our 
Tower of Babel. We have attempted to set aside 
the law of effort and reward that God uttered in 
Eden's Garden, and have builded our Tower of 
Privilege by means of which idle men hope to escape 
from the righteousness of His judgments. There- 
fore He has sent upon men a confusion of tongues 
so that the rich cannot understand the language of 
the poor, and those of low estate cannot interpret 
the speech of those of high degree. The tower of 
Privilege, aiming at the omnipotence of God, and 
claiming for the fortunate a divinity that is sac- 
rilege, has brought about a separation and diffusion 



190 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

of the people, which will persist until the democ- 
racy of God shall come upon them, and they shall 
be able to speak unto each other, to hear and to be 
understood. 

God's law is the law of reward for service. 

He who said of olden time, '^ In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread," cannot be called upon 
to prove the contrary now. 

I have previously called attention to the attempt 
that is often made to justify the injustice of inher- 
itance by the statement that " it is only three gen- 
erations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves,'' — the in- 
ference being that in the cycle of events the turn of 
any given person is likely to come next ; and that at 
worst the evil is limited by being " passed around." 

This is cold comfort to the second generation — 
the only one that counts. As I sit here at the win- 
dow writing, I see a neighbour of mine unlocking 
the front door of his house. He is a mechanic, a 
skilled labourer whom I know to be a man of 
superior ability, yet today getting (of what he 
earns) just enough to live upon comfortably. His 
two daughters have not been to college, nor will 
his son be able to go, for all three had to "go to 
work early " before finishing the High School. 
How much do you suppose that it concerns him 
whether the great fortunes inherited within the last 



SUPERIOR NATURAL ENDOWMENTS 191 

twenty years will pass " from shirtsleeves to shirt- 
sleeves in three generations '' or will be in the same 
family lines a thousand generations hence? What 
is of prime importance to him is that he has received 
less than half what he would have received had not 
Ms earnings been cut down by that proportion of 
them that non-workers have received and are receiv- 
ing, right now. As he reads his histories of Eng- 
land, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and even the 
United States, he knows that the saying " from 
shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations " is 
a damnable attempt to justify an iniquity by a lie; 
for he knows that even in the United States the 
number of the poor who can break through the crust 
of privilege and enjoy it themselves is getting 
smaller and smaller as the monopolization of re- 
sources and the growth of inheritances increases; 
while in older civilizations the impossibility is so 
great that Dick Whittington has been regarded in 
the light of a fairy story for over a hundred years, 
and the idea of a Cinderella marrying a prince is as 
nearly impossible as it ought to be natural. And, 
more than this, my neighbour knows that, under a 
system of privilege^ his only individual hope to 
attain is to become a part of the system himself, 
to dwarf his own soul by learning to deny to others 
the justice he has always longed to secure for him- 



192 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

self, — by mounting the Juggernaut himself, and 
riding to prosperity over the torn bodies and ruined 
souls of the men and women who are not a part of 
the machine of privilege. 

If the statement that family estates die out in 
three generations were true it would merely prove 
that heirs are incompetent and unworthy. But it 
is not true. All the cleverness of the world's best 
attorneys and trust company directors is being ap- 
plied to the task of making estates as nearly per- 
petual as possible. Whether the heir himself has 
brains sufficient to look after his interests or not, 
is becoming year by year a matter of smaller im- 
portance. 



PAET VI 
THE CLAIM OF EXPEDIENCY 



CHAPTEK XXV 

PRIVILEGE NOT JUSTIFIED IN NATURE 

I HAVE devoted the former parts of this book to an 
investigation of the privilege of inheritance from 
the standpoint of justice and of sentiment, thinking 
it inappropriate to examine into its expediency 
before thoroughly analysing its more important 
phases. I desire, however, to pay some attention 
to this feature of the subject now. 

Expediency, when it is opposed to justice and 
true sentiment, is seldom justified, even in small 
matters, wherein fundamental principles are little 
involved. In the tremendously vital and basic 
question of inherited estates, the theory that expe- 
diency demands the continuation of injustice, is 
most dangerous to human rights. 

The law of reward for service only has been shown 
to be an invariable law of nature ; ^ and he who wars 
against nature never conquers her. To conquer na- 
ture is to understand her. To know the laws of na- 

1 Says Blackstone : " The law of nature suggests that on 
the death of the possessor, the estate should become common, 
and become open to the next occupant." 

195 



196 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

ture is a first and necessary step before advantage 
can be taken of them. 

Not even for virtue, purity or philanthropy does 
nature offer so much as a grain of wheat or a glass 
of water without effort. This is the law of nature 
and we do well to consider whether that is most ex- 
pedient which corresponds with nature, or that 
which sets her at defiance. And it is perhaps wise 
to begin our reasoning by ascertaining, if we can, 
why it is that nature refuses food, clothing or shel- 
ter except as a result of effort. 

Why does not nature give to those who do not 
labour? If it were desirable or expedient that a 
specially favoured class receive without effort, why 
in all her manifestations has nature decreed the op- 
posite? The answer has been given to us by the 
most eminent of the world's scientists. The im- 
provement of species, whether animal or vegetable, 
depends upon selection, upon the survival of the 
fittest. Nature has many tests to determine which 
animals of any species are most fit to survive, — ac- 
tivity, hardiness, strength, intelligence, adaptabil- 
ity — and all these tests make some requirement of 
exercise or resistance. To gratify the demands of 
the stomach without the use of the arms or legs 
would deprive those limbs of the exercise necessary 
for nature's continuous test of efficiency — and thus 



PRIVILEGE NOT JUSTIFIED 197 

nature would defeat what seems to be her primal 
law of development. And hence it is, that nature 
refuses to drop food into the mouths of the priv- 
ileged or to place clothing upon the bodies of those 
who set her law of labour at defiance. It is left for 
man to do that, — to fetch and carry for the idler. 
The law of the survival of the fittest, so often used 
to excuse injustice, becomes, when properly re- 
garded, the very strongest argument for a fair field 
and an equal chance so far as human ordinances are 
concerned, so that the fittest man will really become 
the leader of men instead of being starved in the 
cradle, discriminated against in his education, and 
chained to the tread-mill of poverty in his manhood 
by human laws that prevent the fair testing of his 
capabilities in free and equal competition with 
other men. 

The unused muscle withers. The dead log de- 
cays. The water that is stagnant becomes polluted. 
The man chained to a dull routine task by the neces- 
sity of doing double work to support the idlers of 
the world, hears no divine call of new and lovely 
thoughts. His mind atrophies and his ambition 
dies. 

Nature has not found it expedient to create even 
wild animals that live by such an absurdity as mod- 
ern privilege. It is true that savage beasts fight 



198 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

for their food and tame ones seize whatever they 
personally find. But not even a dog will carry a 
bone to an idle dog ; and when it comes to piling up 
bones mountain high for a favoured dog, in num- 
bers so abundant that the idle animal could not 
consume one hundredth part of them, but must 
build a fence around them to keep away the starv- 
ing dogs who got them in the first place, — there is 
no animal but man that has ever been guilty of it. 
Nature permits competition among animals, — a 
competition even of the tooth and claw — but the 
absurdity of such a privilege as inheritance has no 
place in all the laws of animal life. Nor is it only 
among the lower animals that the idea of selection 
and favouritism without merit is repudiated. 
Brought face to face with primordial conditions 
where organized governments do not exist or are 
powerless, man rejects privilege as naturally as he 
everywhere resents it. In the Arctic journey 
known as the Greeley Expedition, before the rescue 
of the explorers by Commodore Schley, the sur- 
vivors were reduced to a condition of starvation. 
Certain rations were divided among the men daily 
and each man who desired was permitted to save 
a portion of his food against the greater need that 
seemed certain to arise ; but when a member of the 
party died he was not allowed to give what he saved 



PRIVILEGE NOT JUSTIFIED 199 

to any other one member, even thoiigii a relative. 
The supply he had saved reverted again to the 
community. It went into the common stock. The 
privilege of inheritance was denied. 

The power of the vast estates today is great 
enough to justify the recognition of this same prin- 
ciple among us on the same ground of Expediency. 

Expediency does not and never v/ill demand the 
existence of a privileged class of men in industry. 
The new notorious declaration of Baer, the coal 
baron, that the interests of labourers will be best 
served " not by the agitators but by Christian men 
to whom God in his infinite wisdom has confided 
the propert}^ interests of the country,'' deserves to 
be placed beside the equally infamous exclamation 
of that Louis who said, " I am the State." The two 
sentences should be branded together with the in- 
famy they merit. There has never been a more 
emphatic statement of the opposite principle than 
that of Jesus Christ himself addressing this class 
of hypocrites. "Woe unto you! For ye devour 
widows' houses and for a pretence make long 
prayer. Therefore ye shall receive the greater 
damnation ! " 

Hypocritical pretences merely aggravate the evil 
they are intended to conceal, and Baer's inference 
that the granting of privileges to Christian men is 



200 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

necessary for the benefit of the unprivileged, was an 
inadvertent avowal of the most contemptible of 
frauds, a fraud that seeks to shield itself by a pre- 
tence of religion. 

Injustice always attempts to conceal its form, 
and the defence of idleness upon the grounds of 
expediency is a striking illustration of this ; but na- 
ture abhors idleness in all her provisions for man- 
kind, and beings of intelligence should imitate her 
in this respect. I 



CHAPTER XXVI 

HYPOCRISY OF THE EXPEDIENCY ARGUMENT 

The hypocrisy of those who defend injustice on the 
plea that it is ^' for the worker's benefit '^ to have 
some more capable person securing his money, is 
so specious and so wide-spread, that an especial no- 
tice of it is appropriate here. 

In the first place, if it were true that the pros- 
perity of the worker would be best served by the 
granting of special privileges to the most cunning 
or forehanded of their fellow-mortals, the sole 
judges of that supposed benefit ought to be the 
workers themselves and never any other persons. 
If any man offers me a benefit it is certainly a nat- 
ural right of mine to declare whether I will accept 
or decline. There are millions of living persons 
who would decline prosperity rather than accept it 
at the price of liberty, — who would rather earn 
their own livings than become the recipients of 
charity, — who would prefer to suffer hardships in 
the struggle for fundamental justice rather than to 
secure plenty hj submitting to the autocratic con- 
trol of others. 

201 



.202 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

In the preceding chapter I quoted the well-known 
statement of a coal-baron named Baer that the in- 
terests of labourers will be best served ^^ not by the 
agitators but by Christian men to whom God in 
His infinite wisdom has confided the property inter- 
ests of the Country '^ ; and I now desire to pay some 
particular notice to this statement. 

No reader will mistake it for the statement of a 
labouring man, so I need pay no further attention 
to that phase of it than to suggest that God in His 
infinite wisdom should have selected a more skilful 
spokesman to represent the Christian men referred 
to, who would have been able to conceal his own 
bias with a trifle more ability. Baer has got the 
Almighty to making a personal and confidential 
selection of the guardians of property interests ; and 
instead of choosing men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus 
and the Galilee fishermen, God seems to have seen 
His mistake and resolved to take a chance on Rus- 
sell Sage, Hetty Green, and Jay Gould whose 
special capabilities seemed to be along the line of 
preventing riot, debauch and injurious luxury on 
the part of the working classes. 

The spirit of Baer's words, if approved by the la- 
bouring men themselves would be a spirit of servil- 
ity for the sake of food and clothing. Expressed 
by the defenders of privilege it is the spirit of aris- 



HYPOCKISY OF THE AEGUMENT 203 

tocracy, the expression of a sort of tyranny thnt 
seeks justification by a promise of industrial re- 
sults. 

It infers that the claim of the monopolist can be 
successfully defended by his payroll ; — that the 
great principle of human rights can be settled by 
the cash book of the speculator; — that men's rights 
are limited by the showings of day-books and jour- 
nals ; — that a man's title to freedom depends upon 
his efficiency. And to make a bad matter worse, 
the worker is not to be himself the judge of the ex- 
tent or desirability of these results. The plain in- 
ference of the clause is that his interests are to be 
" served " by some other men whom the coal baron 
sacrilegiously refers to as " Christian men/' thus 
once again besmirching the revered name of Jesus 
of Nazareth, who taught a gospel of absolute indus- 
trial justice. 

" Give me liberty or give me death " are words 
immortal because they expressed an utter denial of 
the sneaking hypocrisy that places industrial pros- 
perity above liberty, and because they thrilled an 
eager nation into seven years of poverty and death 
who might else have fattened under foreign masters 
and lived luxuriously drinking English tea. 

Men face death for liberty — never for prosper- 
ity ; liberty first means prosperity second, and when 



204 THE ABOLITION OP INHERITANCE 

nations barter their liberties in exchange for pros- 
perity, they destroy the very foundation of freedom, 
which, being gone, men are left at the mercy of those 
to whom special priyileges have been granted. 

Those whose interests and rights are at stake are 
therefore the ones who must be permitted to decide 
whether or not they will accept the benefits said to 
be offered to them by those who demand privileges 
— and any seizure of a privilege under the guise 
or cloak of a desire to serve the interests of others, 
is an act of tyranny and hypocrisy that condemns 
itself. 

We must conclude, therefore, that any offers to 
curtail the liberties of workers by placing their 
affairs under the management of others, should not 
be heeded when they come from those who are seek- 
ing authority. 

But, passing from the consideration that this 
statement of divine authority was made by a bene- 
ficiary of the existing system and not by one of its 
sufferers, the claim that the interests of the working 
man will be best served by the granting of privileges 
to the most capable, or cunning, or forehanded, is of 
itself, false. The beneficiaries of privilege retain 
its results for themselves^ not for others, as the rise 
and fall of every wealthy nation of eartli has shown, 
from Babylon to Rome. Men seek privileges under 



HYPOCSISY OF THE AKGUMENT 205 

the pretence that the grant is for what has been 
designated as the " larger good '' — but there is 
hardly to be found in any civilized country in the 
world today a single instance of a privilege-founded 
corporation with which in the end the people have 
not been compelled to engage in a death-struggle 
to keep it from running away with the government 
mint. The railroads, land development corpora- 
tions, street car companies, gas and electric cor- 
porations, express companies and the like that came 
into existence during the great era of America's 
extravagance in giving away her natural resources 
have been attended with graft, robbery and murder 
for two generations. Today, red of tooth and claw, 
they are claiming the right to close against labour 
the unused resources of the nation, and in defence 
of that claim they are protecting their property 
with the guns of private hired soldiers. 

This is the sort of men who have in all history 
asserted the right to control labour " for its own 
good '^ — and who are still voicing that claim today 
— a claim as hypocritical as it is tyrannical. 

Any assertion that the inheritance of wealth from 
generation to generation is for the benefit of the 
workers who get none of it, is the height of impu- 
dence and of arrogance. It deserves to be placed 
in the same class with the act of a master who 



206 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

would steal from a servant in order to increase the 
servant's efficiency, or deny a merited raise in sal- 
ary for fear the employe would spend the money 
for drink. The insolence of the claim of divine au- 
thority for industrial injustice stands without a 
parallel as the most amazing hypocrisy of the 
world. 

But even though this false theory be accepted as 
true, that it is necessary to grant special privileges 
to a certain class in order to provide the incompe- 
tent with rulers, the method of selecting that class 
by the accident of birth is the most senseless of 
legalities, the most idiotic of lotteries. Even the 
most enthusiastic advocate of the super-man theory 
must admit that the privilege of inheritance cannot 
produce the superman, but that by every scientific 
law it proceeds precisely to do the reverse! If it 
be necessary to have a ruling class in industry 
(which I deny with all vehemence, and elsewhere 
disprove, I think), then in the name of common 
sense let the selection of those in authority be made 
upon the grounds of physical perfection, mental 
ability, and spiritual power. The selection of fa- 
vourites by birth is the most stupid of follies — and 
the very method of their selection utterly disproves 
all claim to such favouritism based upon any sup- 



HYPOCRISY OF THE AEGUMENT 207 

posed desire to benefit the worker. On the contrary 
it is proof that the claim of a desire to benefit the 
worker is fraudulent, and that the naming of God 
as a party to such a transaction, is blasphemy. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

EXPEDIENCY ARGUMENTS FALSE. WHO ITS 
SUPPORTERS ARE 

Those whose thought upon human relations is 
based upon utility or results, may often be led far 
afield from justice and truth. Establishing results 
as that which is to be desired, they care not how 
many eternal principles of right they trample upon, 
if only they attain that temporary prosperity which 
they seek. 

Such men are they who approve monarchy if they 
conceive a people to have more sleek bellies under a 
king than a president ; who glorify war because by 
it the ideas of an aggressive state are forcibly ex- 
ploited; who laud slavery because they allege that 
condition to be " better for the slave " ; who make a 
defence for child labour in factories on the theory 
that it produces prosperity ; and whose acid test in 
every economic question is its effect upon imports, 
exports and bank clearings. 

Those who base their opinions upon the consid- 
eration of human rights, however, are never led far 
from the truth. Having only a very simple ques- 

208 



EXPEDIENCY ARGUMENTS FALSE 209 

tion of justice to consider they are not misled by the 
promises of kings, courtiers, world conquerors or 
child-murderers ; and as a result the problems they 
are obliged to face are not usually very complex. 

Questions of expediency are naturally more dif- 
ficult to decide than questions of right and wrong. 

In considering the moral aspect of a subject, con- 
science is at hand ready to guide those who will 
listen to its promptings — but conscientious scru- 
ples vanish when the point to be decided is the re- 
sult in weights and measures. 

When right and wrong struggle, a little child can 
oft decide between them; but when figures and 
estimates are desired, expert statisticians fre- 
quently disagree. 

Moreover, a moral truth is the standard of a 
world. Established as a principle, right becomes 
the proper goal of all mankind; while expediency 
has invariably two sides, each of which favours dif- 
ferent people. Murder, theft, lying, adultery, hate, 
covetousness, are always wrong in principle, but 
often expedient for certain individuals, measured in 
terms of personal advantage. 

Thus it is that while it is easy to prove the inex- 
pediency of the privilege of inheritance for the 
great mass of mankind and to demonstrate its in- 
jury to the majority, we must nevertheless admit 



210 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

the expediency to others. We must recognize that 
it is powerful because of its supporters, many of 
whom profit greatly because of it, others of whom 
think they do, and still others of whom imagine 
that they will in the future. 

Let us discover, if we can, who the supporters 
of the privilege of inheritance are. 

They are first, the heirs themselves, who as a 
body, have by far the largest money interests of 
any small class of people in the world. Having a 
direct privilege to defend they have a compact or- 
ganization, while their opponents, the disinherited, 
but dimly realize the real cause of their impover- 
ished condition, and are not organized. 

Second, come the employes of the privileged, who 
lend them a support that is indispensable. As has 
been shown, household servants, caterers, politi- 
cians, lawyers, and even doctors, professors and 
preachers, have as many temporary reasons for 
maintaining the iniquity of cradle inequalities as 
there are salaries and fees to be derived from the 
service of the privileged. 

The partisans whose direct pay is drawn from the 
coffers of the privileged or dependent upon them, 
are few in number, however, in comparison with 
those who favour the injustices of privilege, in spite 
of their present suffering, because they hope to 



EXPEDIENCY ARGUMENTS FALSE 211 

profit hj them in the future. A long training and 
education has produced in them the hope that they 
will themselves some day become beneficiaries of the 
system. Stories in school books^ from the First 
Reader up, glorify the sudden inheritance or acqui- 
sition of unearned wealth, which children ought to 
be taught to condemn with loathing and disgust. 
Novels produce heroes with vast, unearned for- 
tunes proceeding from nowhere, produced by no- 
body. Newspapers fan the ever -increasing flame 
by stories of miraculous wealth acquired over night. 
A sentiment has been created so favourable to this 
element in business that thousands, nay millions, 
begin to believe that luxury can never be possible 
without privilege. 

It is true that today while privilege exists, only 
those who enjoy a privilege can succeed in obtain- 
ing luxury. But tomorrow, when privilege shall 
be wiped out for ever, every worker shall have lux- 
ury. The earth is overflowing with abundance and 
nothing but the stupidity of man prevents all from 
enjoying the luxuries that are today appropriated 
by the few. 

That there are many who benefit by the inher- 
itance privilege, directly and indirectly, cannot be 
denied, but that these form an idle class whose in- 
terests are opposed to the interests of all workers is 



212 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITA:NGB 

equally clear. The utmost that can be said in fa- 
vour of the expediency of our present system of 
unearned estates is that there are some who profit 
by it; and the bitter reflection that must imme- 
diately accompany this thought is that their profit 
is withdrawn directly from the industry of the com- 
munity, and therefore from the labourers and cap- 
italists who are the sole producers in all industry. 

The very essence of privilege being its opposition 
to the rights of labour and earned capital^ how then 
can the claim of expediency be made for it except 
in mockery and humour? Privilege does more than 
feed upon labour; it thrives only by its limitation. 
Whether in the form of inheritance or monopoly, it 
becomes greater in proportion to its ability to limit 
the value of all else beside itself. This is the very 
essence of money power. The heir unites with 
the speculator to buy and hold property in non-use 
and thus to artificially limit the natural resources 
of the world. 

Not the niggardliness of nature, but man's arti- 
ficial restriction of natural opportunities is what 
causes high prices and low wages, and the unearned 
wealth of the heir is what enables him to play his 
master part in what Tolstoi called The Great In- 
iquity — the locking up of nature's resources by 
monopoly. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

RESULTS 

Expediency, far from suggesting the continuation 
of our f)i'esent system, under which equality of 
wealth and opportunity have become a menace to 
the very existence of free government, absolutely 
requires the opposite. Second only to the consid- 
eration of human rights as a reason for the destruc- 
tion of cradle wealth, comes the consideration of 
that regard for self-interest that we call expediency. 
The evil of excessive accumulation will disappear 
when inheritance is done away, for the limit of the 
accumulation of wealth will then be placed at the 
life-time of a single individual. The amount that 
any one person can accumulate will be the amount 
that he can accumulate himself. The extraordi- 
nary differences that now exist between men of 
equal capacity will be minimized by the fact that 
all will secure an equal start. The power of the 
few to control all the terms and conditions of manu- 
facture and agriculture will be curtailed. Gen- 
iuses born poor who attain great wealth will still 

213 



214 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

continue. Commonplace and incapable heirs wlio 
maintain or even increase an inherited fortune will 
no longer exist. There will be differences in 
wealth, in some cases great differences, but there 
will be few, if any, cases of wealth unjustified by 
ability. The holders of the world's great financial 
power will be capable men. 

While the number of vast fortunes will be de- 
creased, the number of moderate fortunes will be 
increased, and the conditions of labour will be im- 
proved more marvellously than ever before in the 
history of the world; for the thing that holds la- 
bourers and managers down today is that they are 
sitting in a game in which the aces, kings and 
queens are dealt to the favourites of fortune before 
the game starts. Labour and earned capital can 
demand and will receive their full share of the re- 
w^ard of industry the moment that privilege is elim- 
inated. 

Gigantic speculation will disappear. Men who 
are engaged in productive occupations have need of 
their funds for legitimate purposes. Speculation 
is the first-born of privilege and monopoly ; and un- 
der a condition in which the most outrageous form 
of privilege is removed and the extent of each for- 
tune limited to the earnings of a single lifetime, 
speculation will be dealt so severe a blow that its 



RESULTS 215 

chief defenders will be shorn of their power, and 
the objection to laws against speculation will be 
speedily removed. 

Monopoly, which is the necessary basis of suc- 
cessful speculation, will tend to disappear with the 
vast fortunes that have made it possible. It will 
still be an enemy of no mean proportions, but the 
rapid growth of the theory of Henry George and, 
also, of a sane modern socialism, both indicate that 
the days of monopolies are numbered. The exter- 
mination of the privilege of inheritance will speed 
the day when monopoly shall be with us no more, 
by limiting the funds with which it operates, as well 
as the period of time during which the monopoliza- 
tion of any specific resource can exist in the hands 
of one individual. 

Together with excessive accumulation will dis- 
appear its companion evil, poverty. Poverty and 
great wealth are natural counterparts. The palace 
and the hovel explain each other. The tramp and 
the idle millionaire are twin brothers. Their idle- 
ness springs from the same source and will dis- 
appear upon the application of the same remedy. 

Child labour with its million horrors, the modem 
Juggernaut under the wheels of which we have cast 
our children, and have thereby been drawn our- 
selves, will disappear with the coming of conditions 



216 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

that will make it possible for the head of a family 
to support that family without the assistance of his 
wife and children. The disgrace of South Carolina 
will disappear together with the iniquities of the 
probate court, and a reform of the surrogate will 
produce the improvement of factories. The degen- 
eracy, consumption and ignorance that restrictive 
laws have failed to eliminate through child labour 
legislation and Eeform Schools, will disappear by a 
natural economic process, when the pyramid of in- 
herited wealth these babes have supported is re- 
duced in size to the individual earnings of a single 
generation. 

Prostitution, intemperance and crime, at least 
such portion of these iniquities as find their reason 
in poverty, must disaj)pear in proportion as that 
reason is removed. For who is there who would sell 
her body for bread were there an easier method of 
securing it? And who vv^ould steal if labour were 
well paid? The existence of these crimes would be 
limited to the personal degeneracy of offenders ; and 
even this personal degeneracy would be lessened in 
amount because it finds its physical basis in poverty 
and its mental cause in ignorance. 

Deceit and dishonour, the necessary props of un- 
deserved riches, and the inevitable weapon of the 
cheated man as well, must continue to exist in a 



RESULTS 217 

society unfairly organized, but will vanish when by 
the adoption of fundamental principles of equity 
society places its seal of approval only upon meth- 
ods of money-getting that are free from the blemish 
of the unearned. Suicide, last refuge of the de- 
spairing will tend to disappear when we cease to 
fasten hopelessness upon the babe in his cradle, and 
open up to him a world that is not appropriated by 
the favoured few. 

In the place of excessive accumulation, gigantic 
speculation, monopoly, poverty, child labour, pros- 
titution, intemperance, crime and ignorance, we 
shall substitute better education, better morals and 
better business. 

The two great enemies of education today are 
poverty and despair. Boys and girls leave school 
before they have completed the sixth grade mainly 
for two reasons : first, the fact that their earnings 
are needed at home ; and second, the feeling of utter 
discouragement that comes even to the mind of a 
child when he feels that the odds against him are 
too great for him to surmount. It is the common 
testimony of educators that these are the two fac- 
tors that limit the schooling of children more than 
all other factors combined. The establishment of 
an equal sharing of the benefits of past generations 
by all the heirs of earth, will go far to eliminate 



218 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

these two factors that operate against the educa- 
tion of children. 

By a similar process will the morals of the coming 
generation be improved. How much immorality is 
due to the old Adam within, and how much may be 
laid to the door of bad housing, vile surroundings 
and limited opportunity, I leave to others to dis- 
cuss ; but that there is a large proportion of it due 
directly to the latter, no observing person can deny. 
There is not a church or school-house in the land 
that does not bear witness to the belief of mankind 
that clean surroundings awaken a desire for a 
higher spirituality. There is not a charitable or- 
ganization in the world that does not present as one 
of the arguments for its existence the theory that 
better morals are the direct result of better food; 
and there is no person in the world capable of 
thought who will not grant that fair rules in a 
game make honest players, that equitable laws make 
respectable citizens and that fair play in business 
makes honest employes. The feeling that will come 
over mankind when unearned inheritances are done 
away will be a feeling that equity and justice have 
come to earth ; and that feeling will produce good 
morals. 

That better business will be produced by a system 
that gives all men a fair start and an equal chance, 



RESULTS 219 

would be unnecessary to prove did there not exist 
in the minds of so many the theory that business on 
a large scale can only be carried on by the granting 
of privileges; and that silence best becomes those 
who are unprivileged lest the world be overwhelmed 
with ruin, if these unfair advantages are taken 
away. This is the feeling that has operated in the 
past in favour of every iniquity. Slaves were as- 
sured that they would starve to death without their 
masters ; subjects of kings were informed that only 
the magic of their monarch's name could protect 
them from the assaults of other nations. Fear, 
gripping the throats of ignorant and downtrodden 
men, has made them in the past endure the ills that 
are, rather than fly to others they know not of. 

Business will be quickened as never before by 
the strong new inrush of capable blood when a fair 
start and an equal chance becomes the inheritance 
of all. Enthusiasm will quicken the efforts of 
every worker from labourer to corporation presi- 
dent. The certainty of an adequate reward for 
effort will fire the ambition of millions who now 
struggle hopelessly. 

Enterprises that by our present system are ma- 
nipulated for profit only, will feel the quickened 
impulse of hundreds of thousands of hands and 
brains of men actuated by the purpose of doing their 



220 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

work well. " We have but one life to live and can- 
not dictate the policies of the future/' thej will say, 
" therefore, let us do what good we can while we 
may." Capable men who are now hired at small 
salaries to produce profits for idlers will secure 
under the new system bigger profits for themselves. 
Labourers held down today to starvation wages in 
order that a great estate may be perpetuated and 
enlarged, will in most cases be paid better wages 
voluntarily ; and if not they will be in a position to 
enforce their demands; for business will be good. 
Business will be better, bigger, more equitable and 
more profitable ; because privilege, which now takes 
from business an enormous proportion of the total 
profits without making an adequate return, will be 
cut off altogether from the source of supply, and 
every dollar created by business mil become the 
property of those who participate in it. 

One of the greatest results of a proper inher- 
itance law is the changed attitude toward govern- 
ment that is certain to come on the part of the com- 
mon people who make up the great body of every 
government's subjects. 

From time immemorial common people have re- 
garded government as an institution that produced 
only expense. The government was something that 
must be supported, — something that cost money. 



EESULTS ' 221 

This expense was regarded as a necessary evil. 
Men paid it with or without complaint as the case 
might be. Taxation was the government's weapon. 
The government taxed people. The people must 
pay. 

Governments falling into the hands of the few 
were used by the few for their own interests. They 
became the bulwarks of privilege. Men who al- 
ready had privileges to defend^ and men who de- 
sired to secure privileges, took an interest in gov- 
ernment and learned to control and direct it. The 
common people paying taxes grew into the feeling 
that these taxes were used for the support of gov- 
ernments, the chief function of which was to pro- 
tect and defend the privileged, sustain them in their 
crimes and make the people pay the bill. Search 
history and you will find that nearly every war or 
rebellion has been founded upon a protest against 
a tax or a special privilege. Investigate modern 
politics and you will learn that the deciding issue in 
most local elections is a question of taxation ; that 
the biggest national question in the United States 
for fifty years has centred around a question of 
indirect taxation called the tariff ; that local officials 
are elected or defeated in accordance with whether 
the people believe they will reduce or increase taxa- 
tion. Search even deeper than this and you will 



222 THE ABOLITION OF mHERITANCE 

find that men lie about their personal property to 
the assessor, that they conceal their wealth to avoid 
taxation. 

All of these facts would not be true were it not 
true that some general principle connected with tax- 
ation is wrong. Men are substantially honest. 
These repeated and uniform attempts to escape tax- 
ation really indicate something fundamentally 
wrong about the entire system whereby govern- 
ments become an expense to the citizen, while they 
support the treasuries of the privileged. 

I declare that governments ought not to be an 
expense but rather a source of profit to each indi- 
vidual citizen. 

The reversion of inheritances to the government 
will produce this condition. This property which 
will be drawn from the entire surplus of preceding 
generations, will pay the ordinary expenses of the 
government many times over. The total ordinary 
disbursements of the United States government for 
1916 were |724,492,998.00, practically three-quar- 
ters of a billion. I have shown in another place 
that the appropriation of inheritances in excess of 
one million dollars would produce over a billion a 
year (p. 18, note 1) and that if no inheritances 
at all were allowed the revenue would be four bil- 
lion, eight hundred million per year (preface, p. 18, 



RESULTS 223 

note 3 ) . In either case ( and a conservative meas- 
ure will probably lie somewliere between the two 
extremes), the sum at the disposal of the govern- 
ment will be so much in excess of its ordinary de- 
mands that roads can be built, public buildings 
erected, old age pensions established, hospitals con- 
ducted, sanitary measures adopted, and, if desired, 
actual money payments made to each citizen for no 
better reason in the world than that he is a citizen, 
and with his fellows Joint-heir to all the property 
of the past. 

Not only will the revenue be adequate for the ex- 
penses of Government, and for great social im- 
provements as well, but it will be of such a nature 
that it will constantly increase, as the wealth of 
mankind increases. To assume that it will de- 
crease when great inherited fortunes are absorbed 
by the community is to pass judgment without re- 
flecting that the real property so absorbed w^ould 
not be destroyed but transferred to where it would 
again play its part in the industry of the world, and 
a greater part than it played before.^ 

1 If estates to the maximum limit of one million dollars were 
allowed to pass by inheritance, then the sum total of money re- 
ceived from estates in excess of one million dollars would de- 
crease in the proportion that other measures, such as the taxa- 
tion of unused natural resources, were adopted to prevent the 
securing of large unearned fortunes. In this case the sum" re- 



224 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

It is this misapprehension of the nature of real 
property that causes many earnest people to despair 
of the effectiveness of reforms whereby property 
must be taken from those who have no just claim to 
it. This fear was felt in regard to the abolition of 
property in slaves. Four billion dollars' worth of 
capitalized value was said to be " destroyed '^ by the 
Emancipation Proclamation, but as a matter of 
fact no real property was destroyed at all, since the 
real property, which consisted of labour power, 
resided in the arms and legs of the negroes, and this 
real power was merely transferred from those who 
had no right to it, to those to whom it belonged. 

Now, the transfer of inheritances from heirs to 
the state, will not affect their value to the world, 
in the purchase of materials and the employment 
of labour. The money thus obtained will be re- 
spent. It will find its way into the pockets of 
working capitalists and labourers. They will spend 
it for food, clothing, shelter and luxuries. It will 
travel the same industrial route as at present, but 

ceived from inheritances would become less as the sum re- 
ceived from other sources became greater, hence there would be 
no diminution in revenue to the government. If no estates were 
allowed to pass by inheritance, however, the sum total of such 
receipts by the government would not decrease under any cir- 
cumstances. It would simply be composed of a much larger 
number of estates of smaller size ; and the gross amount would 
increase as the prosperity of the country increased. 



RESULTS 225 

witli this significant difference, that it will come 
quickly into the possession of those who are entitled 
to it through self-service. These men will secure 
and divide it in accordance with the laws of fair 
competition, — competition freed from the in- 
equities brought about by inheritance. These 
men, like their predecessors, will acquire wealth. 
Their fortunes will be smaller, but there will be an 
immeasurably larger number of them ; and the total 
is certain to be as much larger as the new genera- 
tion of workers is more hopeful, more vigorous and 
more successful than the old. 

Imagine, if you please, a government not an ex- 
pense but a source of profit to each individual 
within its jurisdiction, — a government giving to its 
members more than it takes from them, — a govern- 
ment under which speculation, monopoly and vast 
accumulations in the hands of individuals are dis- 
couraged, — a government under which poverty, 
child labour, prostitution, intemperance and crime 
are exceptional conditions, with education, public 
morality and fair competition the rule. Will not 
such a government demand and obtain a loyalty, 
patriotism and spirit of service from its citizens the 
like of which has never been known in history? 
Yet this is a plain and easy possibility in any coun- 
try and every country in the world. 



226 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

The abolition of inheritance is not indeed a pan- 
acea ; but is it not a necessary condition ? Can we 
have equality of opportunitiy at any time in life 
unless we start with equality in the cradle? 



CHAPTER XXIX 

ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE NECESSARY BEFORE 
OTHER REFORMS CAN BE SECURED 

Such portions of this book as have been devoted 
to answering objections to the Abolition of In- 
heritance, have been, of necessity, addressed mainly 
to readers of a conservative tendency. 

It is fitting that a short statement be made here 
in answer to objections urged by radicals. 

Such objectors are not likely to deny the justice 
of the abolition of inheritance. They are inclined, 
rather to urge that 

a. The abolition of inheritance is too mild a 

measure, leaving untouched the causes of 
inequality arising from monopoly and specu- 
lation. 

b. The adoption of other reforms will make large 

estates impossible. The abolition of in- 
heritance will therefore be unnecessary. 

I shall reply here to these two points, and in so 
doing I shall show that the abolition of inherited 
money power will be of incalculable aid in bring- 

227 



228 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

ing about any other reforms that are just and 
needed. 

a. Is the Abolition of Inheritance an Inadequate 
Measure? 

Those who hold that the proposed measure is too 
mild because it leaves untouched other sources of 
unearned wealth, are right in the contention that 
the abolition of inheritance is not a panacea. No 
single measure is or can be. 

Admitting that the abolition of inheritance will 
produce cradle equality, they desire to go far be- 
3^ond this, and to produce laws or conditions that 
will guarantee equality of opportunity after the 
cradle is past. 

With the aims of these reformers I heartily agree 
— and of the final success of the war against privi- 
lege, in one guise or another, I am certain. I be- 
lieve in the future equality of opportunity of all 
mankind as devoutly as I believe in God. To me 
human justice and divine love are identical terms. 
All good must come to mankind in due season and 
as rapidly as mankind is capable of receiving it. 

With my Single Tax critics I agi^ee in this: 
That the monster evil with which the disinherited 
must struggle is the monopolization of natural re- 
sources, held out of use for a speculative profit. 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 229 

With my Socialist critics, also, I agree that all 
means of transportation, communication and ex- 
change must be socialized. 

But to both I say that the most powerful single 
Aveapou of privilege today is inherited wealth. It 
is as natural for huge inherited fortunes to unite 
in self-defence as for a bird to fly or a fish to swim. 
There need be no agreement between heirs that they 
shall buy control of the earth's resources. That 
means of self-defence is as clear as sunlight. It 
is not sufficient to say, as Henry George said, that 
large estates cannot continue to exist in their pres- 
ent size when the ownership of natural resources 
in non-use is forbidden; one must go farther and 
see clearly that the power of those who hold natural 
resources out of use can never be broken until the 
inheritance of money power is forbidden. 

I have shown that the real strength and coherence 
of money-power lies in the inheritance principle. 
The strangle-hold of privilege is in the grip it has 
upon the transferred wealth of the past generations. 
It will be as impossible for privilege to continue, 
once it is stripped of the bulk of its sinews of war, 
as for monarchy to endure with the inheritance fea- 
ture lacking. The inheritance feature is what 
makes monarchy perpetual. In the history of the 
world, no elective monarchy has ever endured. 



230 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

Similarly, no species of privilege will be found 
able to long survive the shock of the abolition of 
inheritance. 

The abolition of inheritance is not a mild mea- 
sure. It is a radical measure. Its success will 
create an atmosphere in which all inequalities will 
find it difficult if not impossible to thrive. You 
cannot successfully debate the justice of a privilege 
with a man who already holds it. But men who 
start upon an equality, are likely to seek more earn- 
estly for means to maintain a guaranty of equal 
terms in competition. 

The strategic point for attack is the defenceless 
point. Those who make war upon monopoly, specu- 
lation and franchise privileges find that the public 
mind has difficulty in disassociating the element 
of privilege from the element of service because 
these elements are so often combined in the same 
person. The John D. Rockefeller who has mon- 
opolized oil is also the John D. Rockefeller who 
rendered a magnificent service in the construction 
of pipe-lines. The speculator who grabs the un- 
earned increment of a city or a town is frequently 
the same person who owns and operates a factory 
that gives employment to labour and helps to build 
up the town or city. The franchise promoter who 
waters the stock of his corporation often also con- 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 231 

ducts an otlierwise clean business, useful to the com- 
munity. The economic thinker can clearly distin- 
guish between what these men are not entitled to, 
and w^hat they deserve. He can see that the land- 
lord is entitled to a profit as builder of a building 
and not as mere owner of the lot made valuable by 
the community. But the untrained thinker can- 
not see this. To him John D. Rockefeller is either 
w^holly bad because he is a monopolist or wholly 
good because he has rendered a service. 

The heir has no such defence. He does not com- 
bine in his person both privilege and service, for 
he has never rendered any service. The plain, com- 
mon citizen can see and wdll see the iniquity of in- 
heritances more clearly than he will see the iniquity 
of speculation. 

The present law of inheritance is the vulnerable 
point in the armour of privilege. Far from being 
a mild measure, the proposal to abolish inheritance 
is radical, timely, and vital to the success of other 
reforms. 

b. Will the Adoption of other Reforms Make Large 
Estates Impossible? 

The first answer to this question is that no reform 
that will prevent the accumulation of vast fortunes 
is likely to precede the abolition of inheritance. 



232 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

So long as inheritance is permitted, it alone will 
produce oppressive fortunes. 

Of course the tendency of any successful attack 
upon privilege will be to reduce the size of the tre- 
mendous estates that are such a menace to democ- 
racy today ; but until inheritance itself is destroyed, 
large sums of unearned money will continue to be 
an evil of great magnitude. The conservative 
Socialist who secures government ownership of 
monopolies, but leaves individual wealth in the 
hands of those who have it, will find such wealth 
an absolute preventive of equality and a constant 
meddler in governmental management until such 
time as he secures the abolition of inheritance as a 
necessary step in his program. The Single Taxer 
will find the heir in possession of great wealth even 
after his ownership of natural resources has been 
made a source of no profit to him. Henry George 
recognized this fact, when he said:^ "This (the 
confiscation of land rents) would largely reduce the 
Duke of Westminster's enormous income, but 
would still leave him his buildings and all the in- 
come from them, and doubtless much personal 
property in various shapes. ... So would the 
Astors of New York remain very rich.'' 

The heir who receives stocks and bonds based 

1 See Progress and Poverty, p. 450. 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 233 

upon unearned increments of future values would 
lose those values upon the adoption of the doc- 
trines of Henry George. He would lose the power 
to secure vast revenues from watered stocks. On 
the other hand, he would not lose the values based 
upon actual investment in railroad tracks, cars, 
stations and equipment. He would not lose the 
values based upon telegraph wires and instruments, 
upon telephone wires and equipment, upon electric 
power-plants, upon factories and machinery, upon 
vast stocks of merchandise, upon cash and all other 
personal property. These would be more safe and 
secure than ever before, and of far greater value. 
Henry George was right, gloriously right, in seek- 
ing to destroy speculative values ; and the world is 
ringing today with the sounds of victory for his 
cause. But Henry George did not claim that the 
abolition of speculative values was a panacea. He 
said " The reform I have proposed . . . has the 
qualities of a true reform, for it will make all other 
reforms easier.'' 

This observation applies with equal force to the 
abolition of inheritance. In an eminently practical 
sense the extermination of inherited estates will 
make the Single Tax itself easier, as well as all 
other reforms; for it will take from the merciless 
hands of the idle the one weapon they know how 



234 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

to use, — the money itself with which they hire law- 
yers, buy newspapers, control governments and 
close every avenue of public opinion. 

It is true that the adoption of other reforms will 
limit the size of the inherited estates of the future. 
God grant it. May it come soon. But let us not 
delay the wheels of justice now, as they move along 
this plain and easy road to freedom. Let us not 
leave this monster unattacked in the hope that he 
will die a natural death in the happy times to come. 
Let us exterminate him now, remembering that in 
his death the other monsters to which he is related 
w^ill lose their courage and their strength. The heir 
supplies the original funds with which privilege 
operates. To end his power is to leave all other 
favourites of privilege without their most important 
financial supporter. 

The Great War now devastating the world has 
brought to the public attention, in a remarkable 
way, certain doctrines which may be described in 
a general way as the " philosophy of force," which 
must be considered here. To a certain extent, this 
philosophy has animated governments for thou- 
sands of years, and it has found its last and most 
terrible expression in the cataclysm by which we 
are now being overwhelmed. 

Stated in simple words this philosophy is as fol- 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 235 

lows : Tiie evolution of the race from lower forms 
to higher is the most important thing in the world. 
Nature's method of accomplishing this evolution 
is the weeding out of the weak and incapable, as 
explained by Darwin in the famous phrase " the 
survival of the fittest." The law of the survival 
of the fittest being nature's method of perpetuating 
those forms of life that are hardiest and best 
adapted to the higher activities of life, mankind 
should apply the same law to itself, and thus evolve 
the super-man. The most advanced nation, in con- 
quering those less advanced, confers a blessing upon 
humanity. The race is either benefited or exter- 
minated, progress is insured, the super-man is de- 
veloped. Therefore might is right, and theories 
regarding justice must give way to the actual might 
of the conqueror, which in the end will produce a 
stronger and more intelligent human race. 

The bearing of such a doctrine upon the question 
of inheritance, as well as upon all other reforms 
now being agitated in the civilized countries of the 
world is too definite and too important for me to 
pass it by without suitable reply. 

I shall not undertake to dispose of the doctrine 
by a logically complete presentation. That would 
require greater space than is at my disposal. It is 
sufficient for our present purpose to note that it 



236 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

is a doctrine that would justify a prize fighter in 
killing the President of the United States, and by 
virtue of which it could be shown that a tiger in de- 
stroying a human being, was acting in line with the 
common good. The most advanced nation is often 
small and weak physically. 

The practice of drawing analogies from nature is 
vitally wrong and illogical. If we are to imitate 
the lower animals, which one shall we imitate, the 
rooster, that is polygamous, the migratory bird, 
that has a different mate each season, or the mourn- 
ing dove or ostrich, that is monogamous? Shall 
we imitate the bee that feeds and nourishes the 
drones of the hive, or the drone that waits to be 
fed? The she-bear that will fight for its young to 
the death, or the tom-cat that will devour its own 
offspring? 

The habits that govern the conduct of animals dif- 
fer greatly ; and are especially at variance upon the 
question of force. Bulls, stags and roosters fight 
each other for the possession of females. Shall 
man therefore justify himself in doing the same? 
Man's very triumph over the lower forms of crea- 
tion has been the substitution of intelligence for 
force; and the use of force would seem therefore 
to be a reversion to a lower form rather than an 
advance in civilization. True, force for self-defence 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 237 

is undebatable, because it is unavoidable if the free- 
dom of either an individual or a society is to be 
maintained; but the justification of the use of force 
in aggression upon the ground of the example of na- 
ture, is an absurdity when applied to man, for it 
was by the substitution of brain for muscle in the 
evolution of man, that nature placed this being 
in a superior class, to which the rules of base ani- 
mal life cannot apply. I do not wish to place man 
upon the level of the dog, the horse, the coyote, or 
the hyena. 

But, passing the question of examples drawn 
from nature, the apostles of forceful aggression 
argue that man being as he is, force is the rule of 
the world, — that the final arbiter of all questions 
is the sword, in the hands of the super-man, or the 
super-race. 

For the present purpose it is not necessary either 
to deny or to affirm this statement. It is essential 
from the very viewpoint of these advocates of the 
super-man theory, that a real super-man be devel- 
oped, instead of a fictitious one, one who is wise, 
not ignorant; strong, not weak; virtuous, not vile. 
If force is to be admitted as the determining 
factor in evolution, then that very force should be 
used so as to create conditions under which the 
strong will not be accidentally deprived of oppor- 



238 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

tunity at birth. Yet force, when it supports privil- 
ege, encourages a system whereby the weak and in- 
capable heir is permitted by law to control a prop- 
erty, and all prospects of improvement in the race 
through the profitable use of that property, must 
be abandoned. The advocate of the force theory, 
when he defends privilege, is aiming a vital blow at 
that very advantage which he offers as the main 
defence of his system. He is creating conditions 
under w^hich the rise of the super-man will be de- 
layed if not rendered altogether impossible. 

If physical strength were the chief attribute of 
the super -man, as of the draft-horse or the elephant, 
even then man should repudiate that system 
whereby those physically strong at birth are left 
to the mercy of hunger and disease. But when w^e 
consider that mental and spiritual attributes are 
what is mainly desired in the coming man, the folly 
of raising tw^o-thirds of our children in ignorance, 
without proper schooling or moral influences, in 
order that a small number shall be ruined even 
more effectually by idleness becomes apparent. We 
begin to see the philosophy of Nietzsche, and 
Treitschke and Von Bernhardi as it really is, an 
amazingly impudent invention of sophists who de- 
sire to give the colour of scientific approval to the 
most vile attacks upon the liberties of mankind. 



NECESSARY TO OTHER REFORMS 239 

The philosophy of aggression falls of its own 
weight. Only through freedom can the human 
race advance; and only through equality of oppor- 
tunity can the super-man arise bringing freedom 
with him. 

If it be true that only the test of strength can 
produce a race of superior men, by weeding out 
the incompetent, then let that test begin without 
advantage to any, so that those who are selected 
will be the really strong, and not merely the lucky, 
who may be strong or weak as accident or favour- 
itism may direct. 

Let those who look to nature for an example look 
far enough and they will find that there are real 
lessons to be learned from her. They will see that 
nature while creating animals and plants with ad- 
vantages of strength, beauty and location, over 
others of their kind, ceases her partiality there. 
She makes no robin that will carry food to an 
eagle, — no sparrow that will fetch feathers for a 
peacock, — no horse that will either carry oats to 
another horse, or drive hungry horses away when 
it has had enough. Nature, while granting even 
to its humblest creatures a full title to the use of 
what each needs, has created no animal but man 
that will hold possession of what it cannot use, or 
attempt to dictate to its kind, beyond the grave. 



240 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

Among the birds and beasts there is no being with 
any likeness to the lawyer who will help a corpora- 
tion do an act that robs the common people to 
whom he and his family belong. There is no ani- 
mal with feathers, fur or fins that performs a func- 
tion similar to that of the preacher who preaches 
the blessings of poverty to the starving of his kind. 
And even where leaders are chosen from flock or 
herd, they are not fed without a labour of their own, 
nor honoured by hereditary succession. The hive 
is a democratic monarchy ; the ant-hill is a republic ; 
and when birds fly their leader is selected for age, 
for ^dsdom and for strength. Accumulators in the 
animal world are without honour, save as they ac- 
cumulate for the general good, and the principle 
of inheritance of property, being against nature, is 
not known among animals at all. 



PAKT VII 
THE REMEDY 



CHAPTER XXX 

TAXATION THE MEANS OF REMEDY 

The inlieritance of unearned money, then, is a legal 
injustice, and the enormous extent of such inherit- 
ances is a grave danger to the state. 

I do not ask the reader to bear with me if I 
have failed to conclusively prove this. I do not 
beg the privilege of a compromise if the contention 
I have made appears to be only partly true. I make 
no apology, and crave no lenience. What I have 
said is true or false. If false, I ask you to go no 
farther. // truey I ask you to follow me to the 
end. 

Unearned money is the direct, unquestionable 
cause of its opposite, undeserved poverty; and un- 
merited poverty will never cease until the power to 
get money without earning it is utterly overthrown. 

Apologists for the system of privilege under 
which we live will tell you that this cannot be done, 
that unearned money cannot be separated from 
earned money, that the best we can do is to com- 

243 



244 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

promise with tbe evil the best we may, seek to con- 
trol it, and trust to the generosity of the human 
heart to alleviate such suffering as cannot be 
avoided. 

I say that the privilege of securing money with- 
out labour can be and will be entirely destroyed, 
that unearned money can be positively identified 
and separated from earned money and that the day 
of complete deliverance is at hand. 

I shall, in another book, take up the subject of 
unearned money of all other kinds, but in this book 
I have been obliged to confine myself to inherit- 
ances. This form of unearned wealth indicates, 
as I have shown, no possible element of desert upon 
the part of the beneficiary, and, moreover, no claim 
thereto is made by him, or on his behalf. In this 
respect at least, inheritances differ from all other 
forms of unearned wealth, for they are simply gifts 
acquired without merit or even a claim to merit. 
A clear line can be drawn between the earned and 
the unearned in this case at least, because an in- 
heritance is all unearned. 

For the destruction of the privilege of inheritance 
no revolution is necessary. It is not necessary to 
institute any new form of government or to invoke 
the aid of any new constitutional powers. No civil 
wars need be required, no dripping guillotines, no 



TAXATION THE MEANS OF REMEDY 245 

dynamited parliaments. The means is as conven- 
ient as the necessity is evident. It is taxation.^ 

" The power to tax,'^ said Chief Justice Marshall, 
'' is the power to destroy." Certainly the power 
to destroy a privilege that brings poverty to its peo- 
ple is not only the right but the duty of a govern- 
ment. 

The right of a government to appropriate all 
wealth to which individuals have no labour title, 
is as nearly undebatable as any question may in 

iJolin Stuart Mill, who imbibed many of his ideas from 
Bentham, favoured limitation of amount by direct enactment 
rather than by taxation. He says : " The inequalities of prop- 
erty which arise from unequal industry, frugality, perseverance, 
talents, and to a certain extent even opportunities, are insep- 
arable from the principle of private property, and if we accept 
the principle, we must bear with these consequences of it ; but 
I see nothing objectionable in fixing a limit to what any one may 
acquire by the mere favour of others, without any exercise of 
his faculties, and in requiring that if he desires any further 
accession of fortune he shall work for it. I do not conceive that 
the degree of limitation which this would impose on the right of 
bequest would be felt as a burdensome restraint by any testator 
who estimated a large fortune at its true value, that of the 
pleasures and advantages that can be purchased with it; on 
even the most extravagant estimate of which, it must be ap- 
parent to every one, that the difference to the happiness of the 
possessor between a moderate independence and five times as 
much, is insignificant when weighed against the enjoyment that 
might be given, and the permanent benefits diffused by some 
other disposal of the four-fifths." 

— J. S. Mill, Political Economy, Bk. 2, Ch. 2, p. 232. 



246 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

reason be; and if governments will adopt the 
fundamental principle of supporting themselves 
not by levying taxes on the industry of individuals, 
but by simply appropriating those values that are 
in their very nature the common property of all liv- 
ing people, yet not capable of being justly divided, 
industry will flourish and privilege decay; the am- 
bitions of the worker will be realized and the royal 
privilege of the heir will vanish into the oblivion 
of outgrown follies and iniquities overthrown. 
Let us but start right and honestly, upon a plat- 
form of reward for service only, and the elimination 
of unearned wealth will become a problem as easy 
of analysis as the terror of its existence is a miser- 
able reality. Let us but eliminate from our own 
souls the dwarfing hope for what we do not deserve 
through effort, and we will be rewarded bv a vision 
of the present causes of our suffering that will lead 
us to see clearly how to remedy it ; and as a natural 
consequence, prosperity, peace and plenty will come 
to high and low, in varying degree of course, but in 
such abundance that there shall be no more death, 
neither sorrow nor crying — for God shall be in the 
midst of us, and the kingdom of the Eternal shall 
be among us. 

Last night, eager to write those sentiments that 
I have just recorded, in conclusion of this book, 



TAXATION THE MEANS OF REMEDY 247 

I sat writing until near the approach of dawn, and 
then, when I had finished, turned out my light and 
stepped out upon the porch of our home to refresh 
m3^self in the cool air of the night. It was a moon- 
less night, so thick the clouds that even the stars I 
loved behind them, shone to no purpose. I could 
not even see the hands with which I groped my way. 
Darkness impenetrable covered all. The sky w^as 
as black as the earth, and no line of demarcation 
separated them. I stood in the uncharted centre 
of the huge bowl of night, feeling rather than see- 
ing the darkness around me. Presently the east 
wind drove the clouds before it and a dozen tiny 
stars first twinkled in the darkness and then faded 
in a gentle glow that suffused the eastern sky and 
heralded the coming of the sun. The light grew 
stronger, the sun shot his splendour into the thick 
gloom of night and the morning came, majestic, in- 
spiring, full of new delight I 

Daylight is here! The dawn is breaking! Ig- 
norance, greed, superstition, and privilege are no 
longer the masters of the earth. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE STRUGGLE 

For the conditions of poverty in which we find the 
majority of this the wealthiest nation upon earth, 
the multiplex remedies offered by privilege through 
its conscious and unconscious representatives, 
fairly make one dizzy. Charity, protection, regu- 
lation of trusts, prohibition, religious revivals, na- 
tional purity crusades, and a thousand other cures 
are presented. In this maze of suggestions we have 
become so bewildered as to overlook the plain and 
easy road to freedom, viz: the extermination of 
privilege hy the existing constitutional method of 
taxation. 

Is the inheritance of vast estates unjust — the 
cause of poverty? Tax it to death. 

The attempt has always been made, and is now 
persisted in, to make government appear mysteri- 
ous; — and, truly, as generally administered, it 
seems to be so. But I deny that there is any neces- 
sity for mystery if we will but speak plainly and 
demand the extermination of the privileges that 
now require for their defence and explanation three- 

248 



THE STRUGGLE 249 

fourths of the time and attention of legislators. 
All control of wealth through inheritance is in its 
nature tyranny; and the support or denial of such 
tyranny as this is the greatest problem of govern- 
ment today. 

An inherited estate, carrying with it a royal and 
almost immeasurable power over the lives and prop- 
erty of the disinherited, can have no other explana- 
tion than that mankind is hereditable property. 
Inheritance is the mastery of the property of others, 
and the disinherited person is in the part and char- 
acter of a slave in precisely the proportion that 
he is deprived of what is his by having it given to 
another. The man who, earning fifteen hundred 
dollars a year, receives only six hundred, is in 
that position because unknown, and unidentified 
beneficiaries of privilege are securing the remainder 
without labour. His six hundred dollars will 
barely keep him and his family alive. He is as 
much a slave, economically, as though his obedi- 
ence were due to some one individual master, with 
the difference that, while a master would be re- 
quired by self-interest as well as public sentiment 
to support him in the winter and between seasons, 
he is left devoid of such protection under a system 
that robs him of his labour without identifying any 
one responsible person. He is powerless. He 



250 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

wants the full reward of his work and does not 
know where to go, or whom to seek, to make his 
demand. 

I do not mean that his position is worse than that 
of the slave. Far from it. He has his self-respect, 
and he is getting his education. Like the escaping 
galley slave who has leaped into the sea, he is 
temporarily in a more dangerous position than if 
he were still labouring in chains upon the ship un- 
der the eye of his master. He is in danger of 
drowning, of sharks, of rocks along the shore. 
When he reaches the shore he will struggle against 
quicksands, and fight with wild beasts until he 
has established him a home and secured a supply 
of food. Then a long, perilous journey will be 
before him until he reaches his native land. But 
reach it at last he will, and there in the arms of 
his loved ones he will breathe the air of freedom, 
and fill his soul to overflowing with life and lib- 
erty I 

Those who base their defence of inheritance upon 
the point of expediency, object to the right of all 
children to be well-born as to property, on the 
ground that it is a levelling system. On the con- 
trary, it is the system of inheritances that we now 
have that is a levelling system. It admits to its 
advantages every species and kind of buman being 



THE STRUGGLE 251 

from the mental giant to the idiot, from the Her- 
cules to the consumptive wreck. Virtue and vice, 
ability and incompetence, wisdom and folly, learn- 
ing and ignorance, health and disease, in short 
every species of human inequality, is here placed on 
the same level with chance and evil as the directors 
of destiny; whereas, with a fair and equal start, 
virtue, strength and wisdom w^ould gain for each 
possessor his just reward, while vice, weakness and 
ignorance would be shorn of their present power to 
dominate in the activities of life. There would be 
distinctions and differences among men as before, 
but with justice as referee, rather than the chance 
of inheritance. 

Our system of inheritances puts children over 
men, weaklings over strong workers, moral wrecks 
over s|)iritual leaders. It is impossible to conceive 
a more uncertain and unfair method of levelling 
men commercially than the system of entailed for- 
tunes under which we now^ suffer. 

Privilege is merely the modern form of conquest 
and tyranny. What was once accomplished by 
William the Conqueror and by Robin Hood, is now 
brought to pass through the control of law-making 
bodies. The direct levy then made by the soldier 
and the highwayman, is identical with the direct 
levy now made by the heir, for it is money obtained 



252 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

without service. But whereas the soldier and the 
robber had at least the fiiament of a claim to 
privilege based upon personal activity and strength, 
the heir is devoid of even this slender pretext. And 
whereas the old time favourite of fortune was able 
to contribute at least the shrewdness or brutality 
of a strong mind to the maintenance of his jDrivilege, 
the modern scions of inherited wealth are protected 
in their property entirely by the laws made and 
perpetuated hj their o^YIl innocent victims, who 
are unconscious of the mighty power that they, by 
virtue of democracy, possess. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

CONCLUSION 

If we desire to be either logical or just we can come 
to no other conclusion than that inheritance is a 
privilege, not a right, and that since ail values are 
being created daily by living people, any property 
secured Avithout service on the part of the identical 
person obtaining it is necessarily appropriated from 
the supply of living people who are rendering 
service. 

Property is for the living, not the dead. 

The dead cannot use it. 

Only the living can or do have any power to give 
it value. Only the living suffer when that value 
is appropriated by those who do not create it. An 
authority granted by the bloodless in violation of 
the rights of those who breathe, is of necessity null 
and void. 

The father, being dead, has no wants or powers. 

The son, except as to what he earns, has no right 
to receive the property of the past. 

The principle of inheritance is derived from 
monarchy. It is usurpation of the rights of la- 

253 



254 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

boiir and earned capital. It is a contradiction 
and denial of the authority to control property 
which is inherent in those living persons who are 
entitled to it by the eternal jjrinciple of reward for 
service. 

The extent of the evil of inheritance is unbeliev- 
able even in the minds of those who suffer from it 
most, for in their misery they do not see that the 
very simple reason that they fail to get what they 
earn, is that they are giving it to some one else. 
Nearly every other sort of answer to the puzzle is 
being made by those who benefit from wrong, yet 
the real answer, so clear, so plain, so undebatable, 
seems almost to have been overlooked. The exact 
amount of all created products is the exact account 
of service rendered in the world. Every penn;/ 
earned is secured by some one, because values are 
never lost. Every penny paid to any one who does 
not earn it is taken directly from the pockets of 
those who are earning it. Heirs do not receive 
without injury to others. Every dollar that they 
receive is a direct robbery of labour and earned 
capital ; and the thing that makes this robbery most 
pathetic is that the unprivileged and disinherited 
are ignorant of the cause of their misfortunes. 
They do not know that when a boy inherits a 
hundred million without earning it, they must pay 



CONCLUSION 255 

every dollar of it in high prices and low wages, as 
long as the privilege of that fortune exists. 

With a degree of material progress during the 
last century that is so amazing as to surpass the 
miraculous, we yet see wages at the margin of 
subsistence, women and children toiling in fac- 
tories, human babies dying like rats in tenements, 
the souls and the bodies of the workers of the 
world, fettered and confined. We see prisons 
filled with men and boys driven to desperation, ig- 
norant of the simple means of attaining justice 
without violence. We see brothels filled with the 
hopeless and the betrayed. We see poor-houses and 
insane asylums crowded to their utmost capacity 
by men and women who have lost their courage 
and their health in the unequal contest. We see 
a vast body of men and women of moderate means, 
professional folk, persons of dignity and learning, 
supporting things as they are, because they fear to 
lose what little they have, and seeking only to re- 
tain their hold upon that relation so aptly de- 
scribed as that of " little brothers of the rich." 
And, most astounding of all, we see all but a com- 
paratively few of the rich themselves (except the 
idle rich) so torn with worry and anxiety lest they 
should themselves become the victims of the terrible 
system we have set up, that neiTOus prostration, 



256 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

indigestion and a vast multitude of diseases result- 
ing from sedentary habits and mental strain, liave 
robbed even them of the real and abiding value of 
the advantage of fortune that they seem to possess. 

Yet, oh my people ! The earth is young and God's 
mercies are sure to come. In comparison with the 
millions of years since this world began, the cry 
of freedom has been in the last two thousand years 
like the wail of a lusty infant growing into the 
adolescent gutturals of a young man. We are upon 
the threshold of an era of progress that shall re- 
move the barbarisms of the past for ever from the 
diary of today to the sealed history of yesterday. 
Yet we shall not do this save as we are willing, step 
by step, to analyse situations and determine upon 
lines of concrete action, with a courage equal to the 
demands of the times, and with ears and hearts sen- 
sible to the cry of the disinherited and the op- 
pressed. 

The road to freedom, so far as the evil of inheri- 
tance is concerned, is as plain as the road to market. 
The custom of inheritance being based not upon 
right but upon privilege, it is perfectly proper that 
the privilege be taken away from heirs altogether 
and at once. Yet the fact that this evil has been 
so long recognized and permitted among us would 
seem to indicate that we should proceed slowly 



CONCLUSION 257 

both to stop its advance and to limit its future 
power. We must have well in mind the consti- 
tutional obligations that have been thrown about 
it ; and we must as far as possible see to it that the 
means adopted for its correction, while fully ade- 
quate to amend the most terrible evils brought upon 
us by it, shall not be so radical as to take away the 
means of subsistence for persons now living whose 
ability to labour has become atrophied not through 
their fault but through the fault of the system as 
it now exists.^ 

For this reason I think that the limitation of in- 
heritances to which w^e should now address our- 
selves should not apply to the rights of wives and 
widows in any case, should provide for the main- 
tenance of the children up to the age of twenty-five 
and should not affect inheritances of reasonable 
size for the present. 

What constitutes " reasonable size "? 

If we are to establish the principle that a father 
should be allowed to leave to his son power, we can 

1 This suggestiou will bring to the aid of such a measure thou- 
sands who favour the principle of inheritance as to small inherit- 
ances only. " The reasons which justify the institution of in- 
heritance do not apply to very large amounts," says Max West 
in The Inheritance Tax (page 296), " for in such cases inherit- 
ance is not an incentive to useful industry but may become an 
encouragement to idleness." 



258 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

set no limit. No amount of money is sufficient to 
satisfy such a demand, nor should any sum be 
granted upon such a principle. 

If we are to establish the principle that a father 
should be allowed to leave to his son luxury^ the 
evils proposed to be remedied would still exist, for 
the sum demanded would be extraordinary and 
difficult to establish, varying with the tastes and 
follies of the heir. 

If, however, we merely desire to meet the honest 
objections of those parents who desire to leave to 
their children a sum sufficient for their protection 
and education^ the problem becomes simple. The 
sum required, even upon a liberal basis, will be 
comparatively small and easy to arrive at. 

The exact amount that should constitute an in- 
heritance of reasonable size will vary in accordance 
with the period and circumstances of its adoption. 
In Chapter XXVIII I discussed the amount of 
revenue that would accrue to the United States 
government if a maximum of one million dollars 
were allowed to any one heir, and also the amount 
that would accrue to the government if no in- 
heritance whatever were allowed. I suggested in 
that chapter that a conservative figure would lie 
somewhere between these two extremes. I may 
add here my personal opinion that the sum of 



CONCLUSION 259 

,000.00 would produce a steady income of at 
least |4j000.00 per year, wliicli, at our jjresent cost 
of living would be ample to support any person 
comfortably, being over four times as much as the 
majority of labourers receive. Hence, if I were 
called upon to set an amount, I would establish the 
figure at |100,000.00, the sum to be gradually re- 
duced on a sliding scale, as the minds of men be- 
come more and more capable of understanding the 
principles of that exact justice that will be attained 
when inheritances are abolished altogether. 

But even if the maximum amount of each in- 
dividual inheritance were placed at a million dol- 
lars, the reforms springing from the relief of pov- 
erty that would instantly occur, would constitute 
an era in the world's history as great in its influ- 
ence upon the progress and thought of the world 
as the discovery of America or the inventions of 
the nineteenth century. A candid examination of 
the figures presented in the footnotes and page 18, 
note 1, should convince any fair investigator that 
this is not an overstatement. 

As to the wife, I believe she should be considered 
the partner of her husband, entitled not as a 
privilege, but as a right, to at least all Of the power 
of inheritance she now possesses. 

Nature has so arranged the part of woman in the 



260 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

scheme of things as to make it imj^ossible for her 
to earn an independent living and raise a family 
at the same time; so that when, for social reasons, 
government approves and ratifies between one man 
and one woman a contract whereby the womaL 
necessarily becomes economically dependent upon 
the man, it thereafter devolves upon the govern- 
ment to guarantee to that woman an adequate pro- 
vision for the future. 

For a similar reason, children should be sup- 
ported from the same fund up to that age at which 
it is customary for such support to be given by liv- 
ing parents. While it is true that in the vast ma- 
jority of cases the support of living parents is 
necessarily withdrawn from children varying in 
age from ten or twelve to sixteen, yet, when young 
people secure a thorough technical or professional 
education, they are usually without other means 
of support up to the age of twenty-two to twenty- 
five. The government recognizes the age of twenty- 
one as the limit of a young man's minority, at 
which time his father's liability for his bills ceases 
even if the father is alive, but the gradually in- 
creasing demands of professional education and 
early training for business efficiency, would seem 
to indicate the wisdom of allowing for any son 
or daughter a support equal to what their parents 



CONCLUSION 261 

should have given them for such purposes had they 
lived. Any support past the age of twenty-five is 
injurious in almost every case today, and should 
be withdrawn. 

Provision should be made for physical infirmi- 
ties, and I am of the opinion that though the poor 
in such cases are now required to accept a very in- 
adequate support from state or county, yet the re- 
sponsibilities of parenthood are such that it is both 
just and wise to give to parents the assurance that 
the children they bring into the world, if physically 
infirm, will be cared for in the event of their in- 
validism, w^ith all possible tenderness and sym- 
pathy. 

As to my third point, viz : that inheritances should 
be granted to privileged heirs up to a reasonable 
sum for each son, daughter or other direct heir, 
this would be in my opinion a concession to those 
who believe in the right of a parent of means to 
provide against any possibility of want for his 
children, without conceding him the privilege of 
transferring great power to them. Twenty-five 
thousand dollars put into safe mortgages or bonds 
at six per cent will yield fifteen hundred dollars 
a year, a sum fully adequate to the physical needs 
of any individual person in the world, and nearly 
three times the annual w^age of the majority of our 



262 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

working men. No oi}poneuts of justice in inlier- 
itanee laws can possibly argue that the new system 
will bring starvation and ignorance, as it is ad- 
mitted that the present plan does. None could 
argue that we had violated the proper sentiment 
of a parent as expressed in his desire to see his own 
offspring protected from the hardships of the 
worlds for fifteen hundred dollars a year will do 
this. But the exact amount is not the point at 
issue. A maximum of one hundred thousand, or 
even a million dollars, would accomplish amazing 
results. 

The only possible objectors to the plan proposed 
are those who assert the right of a parent to give to 
his offspring luxury or to bequeath to him financial 
power J and the heir's claim to these is an absurdity 
so great that argument upon it ought to be unneces- 
sary; and would be, if it were not for the general 
ignorance of mankind upon the importance of the 
subject. 

• ••••••• 

Is this a dream, this vision of a new heaven and 
a new earth? I think not, for if it were then 
would the song of all the ages be hushed in silence 
and the hope of millions of people now living and 
to come be snatched for ever from them. There are 
today uncounted multitudes who believe that the 



CONCLUSION 263 

kingdom of heaven is among ns : that the prayer of 
Jesus " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven '' 
was a prayer made not foolishlj' nor figura- 
tively but in the positive expectation of an answer. 
There are untold myriads of toil-worn, weary men 
and w^omen who believe that the time is coming 
and is now here when " they shall not build and 
another inhabit, they shall not plant and another 
eat '' ; and that the earth was intended for the 
children of men, each to enjoy the full fruit of his 
toil, so that all may go singing to their labour in 
the morning and return at eventide with laughing 
hearts to the sweet happiness of home, where in 
the starlit darkness they may sit at peace and echo 
in their hearts the song of the great multitude of 
heaven " Hallelujah ! For the Lord God omnipo- 
tent reigneth I " 

And there are, beside these, unnumbered women 
and children and old men, gasping for breath in 
fetid tenements, weeping over the helplessness of 
that poverty that is filling cheap graves with the 
victims of dirt and poisoned food, snatching boys 
and girls from school to toil terribly for the millions 
that other boys and girls are to inherit, and sending 
young men and women remorselessly into worse 
than death. These are crying out today as never 
before to you strong souls who think and feel and 



264 THE ABOLITION OF INHEEITANCE 

act/ to rise in your manhood and glory and tear 
from their shoulders the dreadful incubus of un- 
deserved poverty. For you that are strong must 
bear the burdens of the weak, and you that are wise 
must fight the battles of the ignorant. 

What shall it matter, then, whatever else of good 
or ill may come to you when the King who dwells 
in your heart, shall say, " Come ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the world : For I was an hun- 
gered and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty and ye 
gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me 
in : Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick and ye 
visited me : I was in prison and ye came unto me.'' 
For then, when you and those with you shall say, 
" Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed 
thee? or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw 
we thee a stranger and took thee in? or naked, and 
clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in 
prison and came unto thee? ", then the King shall 
answer and say unto you : " Verily, I say unto 
you. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." 



ANSWEKS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

In the body of the book I have met and answered 
many objections urged against the destruction of 
the Privilege of Inheritance. I have found it so 
difficult, however, to do this without disturbing my 
continuity of argument that in many cases answers 
to objections were not complete and in other cases 
not attempted at all. I have, therefore, gathered 
together the most common objections to which I 
shall make brief replies. 

Objections to any proposed reform are likely to 
disappear or at least to lose much of their signifi- 
cance once the reader is thoroughly imbued with 
the spirit of the reform that is contemplated and a 
knowledge of the benefits shown to issue from it. 
These replies to objections might be inadequate to 
satisfy or convince one who has not read the book, 
but they are not intended for him. They are in- 
tended rather as supplementary information to 
those who have read the book and pondered over 
the problem it presents. It is my hope that, to 
such, the answers to objections given here will prove 
ample and satisfactory. 

267 



268 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

The numerical order in which the objections are 
presented and answered has no significance. 

Objection No. 1 

" Destruction of the privilege of inheritance 
would involve a destruction or at least a lessening 
of the family bond between parents and children." 

A complete reply to this objection has been made 
in Chapter XXIII. It may be summarized as fol- 
lows: The bond of affection between parents and 
children does not depend upon money. It exists in 
a most marked degree, and probably in its greatest 
degree, in families where no inheritance is ex- 
pected, at least no large inheritance. If a bond 
between parents and children does exist on account 
of the expectation of inheritance, that is not a bond 
of affection but of selfishness, that in countless 
cases produces family quarrels the result of which 
is alienation, accompanied sometimes even by mur- 
der. But even if it were true that the expectation 
of money produces an increase of filial affection, 
then that very fact w^ould suggest at once the wds- 
dom of adopting a system under which all children 
alike would share in the benefits handed down from 
the previous generation and all would become filled 
thereby with affection for their parents. 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 269 

Objection No. 2 

" The inequality of wealth is due to character and 
Industry." 

The plain answer to this statement is that it is 
utterly false. An examination of the character of 
our super-wealthy men and the means they used 
to obtain their wealth ( see Myer's History of Great 
American Fortunes) will dispel this impression. 
But even if the statement were true the inference 
that a son is entitled to a reward on account of 
the industry of his father, is entirely illogical. See 
Chapter IX. 

Objection No. 3 

^^ If an equal division of wealth were made to- 
morrow, inequality would again exist tomorrow 
night." 

This is a common answer made to all proposals 
for reform. It is an insult to human intelligence 
because, while it is true, it has nothing to do with 
the case at issue. It is like opposing the restitution 
of stolen property upon the ground that even if it 
is restored it will be stolen again. There is, and 
probably always will be, inequality between men 
both in their power to produce and in their desire 



270 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

to accumulate. My proposal is that the rules of 
competition be so adjusted at the cradle that the 
man or woman of superior ability or industry will 
secure a superior reward, and that the custom of 
granting this superior reward to one who has not 
earned it be discontinued. I contend for an in- 
equality of fortune based on merits against an in- 
equality of fortune based upon heredity. 

Objection No. 4 

" We have always had rich and poor and always 
will. It is useless to struggle against nature.'' 

It is not my contention that the abolition of in- 
heritance will cause differences in wealth to cease. 
It would be a misfortune for the incompetent, ig- 
norant and lazy to receive as great a reward as the 
capable, educated and industrious. What I pro- 
pose is a system whereby the reward will not go to 
the incompetent but to the capable, not to the igno- 
rant but to the educated, not to the lazy but to the 
industrious. The objection here raised is danger- 
ous because it is a half truth. It defends an in- 
equity by a statement that has nothing to do with 
that inequity, and yet because it is a true state- 
ment it leads those who do not think deeply to be- 
lieve that a point has been scored against the pro- 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 271 

posed reform. This objection, like the one preced- 
ing it, has no reference to the reform proposed. 

Objection No. 5 

" If men who labour are paid cash for their work 
what difference does it make whether their employer 
has earned or inherited his money? Has not the 
labourer received all that he is entitled to?'' 

This is one of the most dangerous arguments ad- 
vanced against equality in inheritance because it 
considers only the direct earnings of the labourer 
and not his share in community values. He, in- 
deed, receives an agreed-upon price, but the privi- 
leged heir and his associates have been placed in a 
position to control that price. He, indeed, receives 
pay for his labour, but he and his fellow labourers 
as a class are compelled to support in idleness all 
those living persons who are not rendering a service 
for their support, as fully explained in Chapter VI. 

The case may best be answered by analogy. Sup- 
pose a burglar steals a hundred dollars from A 
and then proceeds to pay to B the agreed-upon 
price of |20.00 for a suit of clothes. Suppose the 
same burglar steals one hundred dollars the next 
night from B and pays A the sum of |20.00 for 
board and lodging. Is it not clear that while the 



272 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

burglar has paid the agreed-upon price to both A 
and B that he has in reality secured his subsistence 
from them for nothing and that he is being sup- 
ported at the cost of extra labour upon their part? 
Now, you have simply to add another step to the 
process to show that the analogy is exact. Suppose 
that instead of being a burglar the man is an heir, 
and suppose instead of stealing one hundred dol- 
lars from A and one hundred from B that he has 
had given to him in the cradle the sum of two hun- 
dred dollars, which, had it not been given to him, 
would have been equally divided between him and 
A and B. Is it not clear that he is receiving his 
subsistence for nothing and imposing an added bur- 
den upon A and B just the same as if he were a 
burglar? I do not mean to cast out the inference 
that an heir is a burglar. I simply wish to show 
that the economic effect is the same and that the 
fact that the burglar or the heir paid an agreed- 
upon price for his food and clothing does not in the 
least modify the fact that in either case an added 
burden was thrown upon the shoulders of A and B. 

Objection No. 6 

" In family enterprises the heir has helped build 
up the fortune. Why should he then not receive 
his proper share for such service? '^ 



ANSWEKS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 273 

He should. He should receive it at the time the 
service is rendered. Where that is not possible, in 
cases where the family fortune is held in one basket 
and that in charge of the father, a proper payment 
should be made to him either at the father's death or 
at any other suitable time. In such a case he would 
not be receiving an inheritance but a payment for 
service rendered and this is precisely the point upon 
which I have insisted in every page of The Aholition 
of Inheritance. 

Objection No. 7 

" Labour is the title to wealth, and the man who 
has built up an estate holds a complete title and has 
the right to transfer it." 

I have shown clearly in Chapter IX that the 
power to give does not imply the right to receive, 
and this is amply supported by the legal decisions 
quoted in the preface. The real answer to this 
objection, however, lies deeper. The objector as- 
sumes that labour is the title to wealth. This is not 
true. The title to wealth is the labour of the 
identical person receiving the wealth. Your la- 
bour cannot establish my title. The right of gift 
whereby this wealth may be transferred without 
consideration is quite different from a title through 



274 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

service. We have always recognized this right of 
gift when gifts are small and not injurious to any 
third party or to the public, but the time has come 
when it is recognized that gifts injurious to any 
third party or to the public may properly be for- 
bidden. Many things right in themselves cease to 
be right w^hen conditions change and they become 
acts injurious to persons other than the parties per- 
forming the acts. Statesmen, philosophers and 
lavryers very generally agree upon the proposition 
that liberty is the right of a person to do what he 
pleases so long as he does not interfere with the 
similar right of other persons to do what they 
please. It is where liberty ends that law begins. 
Law undertakes to define and specify the point at 
which a person's right to do as he pleases must give 
way to the superior right of the community. It is 
to such a point that the civilized nations of the 
world have come now in the march of progress. 
The transfer of immense fortunes, once looked upon 
complacently and indeed in former ages serviceable 
to the world in its condition of progress in those 
times, has become a monster wdiose power throttles 
justice and threatens to exterminate the liberty of 
all else beside itself. The old doctrine that labour 
is the title to w^ealth must give way to the new doc- 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 275 

trine tliat tlie labour of the identical person receiv- 
ing is the title to wealth. 

Objection No. 9 

" The complete ownership of anything implies 
power to make over the ownership to another.'' 

This is a restatement of the previous objection. 
No additional observation need be made here except 
the statement that if complete ownership implies 
power to transfer such ownership (which in the 
preceding reply I have denied) then we have come 
to a point in the history of civilization where com- 
plete ownership is no longer desirable. Certainly, 
if a man can be said to completely own anything, 
that form of complete ownership would ajjply to his 
body. Yet we deny a man the right to make over 
the ownership of his body to another even though 
he do so voluntarily; for we have discovered that 
slavery, whether voluntary or involuntary, is an in- 
jury to society. We also deny to a man the right 
to use his body as he pleases, the minute that use 
interferes with the liberty of another. He may 
swing his fists as hard as he pleases and in any 
direction he chooses, but the moment they come into 
collision with a third party, or threaten to do so, we 



276 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

proceed to curtail his individual liberty. Up to the 
discovery of tubercular germs he might expectorate 
freely in the streets; but modern science has pro- 
duced developments the knowledge of which have 
made it necessary for us to restrict this ancient 
personal privilege. He may shout or sing or talk 
as loud as he pleases but when the exercise of these 
prerogatives interferes with the peace of a hospital, 
church, school or public meeting or intrudes upon 
the sacred stillness of the night we proceed to de- 
prive the offender of what would otherwise be an 
inviolable personal liberty. 

If a man has the natural right to bequeath his 
property to any person he chooses, he would by the 
same principle have the same right to withhold it 
from all persons, to destroy it, burn it or sink it in 
the bottom of the sea. This privilege we deny even 
in the minor affairs of life. It is illegal for a man 
to destroy one coin, to say nothing of a million. In 
most parts of the world he would be liable to pun- 
ishment for burning his own house, and certainly in 
all civilized countries he would be restrained from 
destroying quantities of food or clothing before his 
death, to say nothing of the contempt with which 
his will would be received if he directed his descend- 
ants with torch or dynamite to destroy such prop- 
erty after his departure from the earth. We would 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 277 

not be content with declaring him insane, we would 
utterly repudiate the suggestion that he had any 
right to accomplish such wanton and wholesale de- 
struction of property, although his sanity be beyond 
question. The same theory of human life and gov- 
ernment that gives us the right to stay his hand 
from a wanton destruction of property gathered 
together no matter how honestly, can properly be 
invoked to prevent him from making any other dis- 
position of it that operates against the rights of the 
community that aided him in its production. 

Objection No. 10 

" Governments must be supported by taxation, 
each person being taxed in proportion to his ability 
to pay. Any other interference with property 
rights by governments is tyranny.'' 

This objection contains three statements, all of 
which are objectionable : 

a. ^^ Governments must he supported hy taxa- 
Mon:^ This is true only when no better means for 
support than this is at hand. Taxation is defended 
as a necessary evil, yet there is hardly a nation in 
the world that does not own property of its own, 
producing a revenue that pays at least a portion of 
its expenses. The government of Monaco is sup- 



278 ANSWEES TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

ported entirely by the earnings of a joint stock com- 
pany (the famous gambling establishment of Monte 
Carlo) and does not tax its citizens. This is not a 
very elevating business but it demonstrates the 
proposition that at least one government in the 
world is supported without taxation. Yet all gov- 
ernments, large and small, have certain industries 
or properties by which large amounts of the cost of 
government are defrayed, and in many govern- 
ments, notably Germany, the tendency towards sup- 
porting a government by the earnings of its indus- 
tries and commercial departments is decidedly 
pronounced. 

b. ^^ Each person should he taxed in proportion 
to his ability to pay/^ This doctrine is slowly giv- 
ing way to the theory of Henry George that citizens 
should be taxed in proportion to benefits received, 
and that we should remove taxation from all forms 
of industry, placing it upon unearned increments 
or values created by the community. 

c. ^^ Any other interference with property rights 
(except taxation) ■ by governments^ is tyranny/' 

The theory that the government, in appropriating 
social values, is exercising tyranny over individuals 
who have seized them, is the last stronghold of the 
defenders of all forms of privilege. Under the prin- 
ciple of eminent domain governments rightly claim 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 279 

jurisdiction over all property the possession of 
which is necessary for the public welfare, as well as 
all property the rightful ownership of which is not 
established as residing in any indiyidual. It is un- 
der an application of this theory that I make the 
claim that it is not only the right but the duty of 
governments to appropriate the property of the 
dead, there being no living person entitled to in- 
heritances by virtue of his labour. 

Objection No. 11 

" If an estate can be shown to be unearned or 
built up by fraud it should be taken by taxation but 
not otherwise." 

All estates are unearned by the heirs and should, 
therefore, be taken by taxation. 

Objection No. 12 

" The measure you propose is confiscation." 

That depends upon what is meant by confisca- 
tion. If government seizure of any property is 
confiscation then the appropriation of estates would 
be confiscation precisely as the emancipation of 
slaves was confiscation; but if by confiscation you 
mean the unjust seizure of a man's property then 



280 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

my proposal would not be confiscation because an 
estate is not the natural nor the rightful property 
of the heir. 

Objection No. 13 

" The limitation of the amount any one child 
could receive by inheritance would disturb indus- 
try and make it impossible for great businesses to 
be continued without fatal interruption." 

This has been the immemorial argument against 
reform since the silversmiths of Ephesus com- 
plained that Saint Paul was injuring their business. 
An injury to business, even if certain, would be by 
no means the most terrible of evils. But let us 
consider a moment what the exact facts are. The 
vast majority of the large businesses of the United 
States are owned by corporations. The thing that 
is transferred from father to son in such case is a 
certificate of stock or a bond. These certificates of 
stock and bonds are constantly changing hands 
regardless of the death or the life of the persons who 
own them. In fact the handling of such commer- 
cial papers is one of the largest businesses in the 
world. There are brokers in every town or city in 
all the civilized nations of the earth who are en- 
gaged in selling commercial paper. The manage- 



ANSWEKS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 281 

ment of a corporation is in no way affected by this 
transfer of stock. The vast majority of it can be 
transferred and is transferred ^dthout the knowl- 
edge of the manager of the business until such time 
as the purchaser may desire to record his purchase 
on the books of the company. Statistics are not 
available as to the exact proportion of the large 
fortunes of the world that are thus owned by people 
who have no relation whatever to the management, 
but the reader may get an excellent approximate 
idea by a brief examination of the list of the 700 
largest corporations in the United States such as 
may be found in the supplement to Inheritance 
Taxes for Investors by Hugh Bancroft, or the man- 
ual of securities of any important investment broker 
of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, London or Paris. 
According to the census of the United States, 1910, 
practically 80 per cent of the manufactured goods 
of the nation are produced by corporations, the 
other 20 per cent by firms and individuals. From 
this one-fifth we may eliminate all those organiza- 
tions, the management of which at the time of the 
death of the original proprietor is in the hands of 
any one other than the original proprietor's son; 
since it is manifest that neither the government 
nor any other new proprietor would be any more 
likely to discharge the present manager than the 



282 A]S^SWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

heir himself would be. This leaves for onr consid- 
eration only cases where the son is in actual man- 
agement of the property at the time of his father^s 
death. In this case the son would be entitled to 
and should have an interest in the property long 
before his father's death ; but in cases w^here he has 
not, then the question as to whether the industry 
would be continued under his management or not, 
would be an open question with the chances indi- 
cating that he would be retained. 

The proposition of any great injury to organized 
business through a just inheritance law is thus seen 
to reduce itself to an absurd minimum. On the 
other hand consider the businesses now injured by 
passing into incapable hands. Reflect upon the 
self-evident fact that under a just inheritance law 
these businesses would be saved from ruin, and the 
bugaboo of a ruined business disappears as com- 
pletely as that similar scarecrow that none could 
govern nations but monarch s, and that if hereditary 
monarchs were overthrown the people would be un- 
able to govern themselves. 

Objection No. 14 

" If you deprive a man of the power to dispose 
of his property to his friends do you not force him 
to spend it all upon himself? " 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 283 

No ! Many of our wealthy men have been child- 
less, from Stephen Girard to Chas. M. Schwab. 
I have elsewhere quoted Schwab as saying that 
rich men continue in business for the sake of per- 
sonal power, long after their personal wants or 
those of their families are gratified to the most lib- 
eral extent. Common observation shows this to be 
true. The claim that the rich would become more 
extravagant if prevented from leaving money to 
heirs, is most absurd. The class of men most 
affected by my proposal, is a class of men who even 
under present conditions have no limit to their 
personal expenditures. They have more than they 
desire to spend, — more than they even have time 
to spend. 

Objection No. 15 

" Every child has an equal right under the law 
to acquire property and that is all the equality that 
is necessary." 

In the first place the statement that every child 
has an equal right under the law to acquire property 
is not true at all as to property already at his birth 
given to others. He has a right to acquire it on 
the terms imposed by the heir, but this cannot 
be said to be an equal right with that of the heir, 



284 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

even in a legal sense, since tlie very object of the 
law is to give the heir a superior right to that of 
any other person. The legal rights of heirs and 
non-heirs to acquire property are therefore 
unequal as to all inherited property. They are 
equal only as to uninherited property. Since all 
property from a preceding generation passes by 
descent, it follows that the only legal equality of 
right to acquire is with respect to property not yet 
created. This legal fiction, however, has little to 
do with the case ; since it is the actual economic con- 
dition confronting mankind that is of the only real 
importance. When this alleged ^^ equal right to 
acquire " is considered from an economic point of 
view, it becomes an absurdity too abysmal for 
laughter, too deep for aught but despair. 

It requires only the slightest exercise of common 
sense to see that if a certain property is bestowed 
upon an heir then those who are not heirs have no 
right to acquire the property equal to the heir's 
right to hold it. When a piece of property has 
been given to one person for nothing with the priv- 
ilege of selling it or holding it, and it is withheld 
from another person, who can only buy it upon 
securing the consent of the first person, the claim 
of equal right w^ould be sheer insanity, even if the 
technical legal right were in fact equal. Were the 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 285 

actual property not given to the child, but if he 
were given instead merely the money to buy, it 
might be technically said that the heir and the non- 
heir had an equal legal right to acquire the prop- 
erty, but even then the technical right to acquire 
it would amount to nothing where all the means of 
easy acquirement had been given to a favoured child 
and withheld from others. 

Let me make the proposition clear by illustration 
— I offer a prize to five boys for rowing a boat to a 
certain destination. There being only one boat I 
select one of the boys and give him the boat, which 
is beautifully equipped with strong oars and oar 
locks and is well made inside and out. I give him 
a legal title to the boat and place the prize in it. 
The boy whom I have selected gets in the boat with 
a number of hired experts to show him how to row 
it and indeed to row it for him if desired. Then 
I say to the other four boys, " Now you all have an 
equal right under the law to the prize that is in 
that boat. Get your axes, hammer and nails and 
proceed to make boats for yourselves. Then if you 
can catch the boy who has the prize, to which you 
have an equal right, you have merely to overcome 
him and his crew of experts, and take the prize away 
from him. It is simply necessary for you first to 
learn how to build a boat, then work a number of 



286 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

years for fishermen along the shore until you have 
earned enough money to buy an ax, lumber, nails, 
screws, pitch, paint, etc. Then you can start out 
to catch the boy who now has the prize to which 
you have an equal right and who has been spending 
his time hiring still more people to prevent you 
from getting axes, nails, screws, pitch, lumber, etc., 
and other men who will place obstacles in your way 
as you row. I assure you, however, that you have 
an equal right under the law to the prize in the 
boat." 

The boys, if they had the ability to think at all, 
would reply : " In the first place we have not the 
equal right under the law for you have already 
placed the prize in the boat of the first boy and 
while we have a legal right to it, if we can get it, 
the fortunate favourite actually has now the legal 
right plus the possession while we have a technical 
legal right without possession. You cannot call his 
legal right and our legal right equal. But in the 
second place even if we have an equal legal right to 
it, you know very well that you have started us out 
under a handicap that makes our victory practi- 
cally impossible.'' 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 287 

Objection No. 16 

"Your proposal would not produce equality of 
wealth except in the cradle. It would not remove 
other causes of inequality of wealth.'^ 

Equality of wealth is neither desirable nor just. 
It is not desirable because tastes differ and expenses 
differ in the various conditions of life to which men 
by their own ability have raised themselves, or to 
which through their own fault they have lowered 
themselves. It is not just, because it is a denial 
of superior reward for superior service. But there 
is a vast difference between equality of wealth and 
equality in the opportunity to secure wealth. We 
would not permit our horses to run in a race where 
by design one of them had been deprived of food, 
another saddled with a hundred pound weight, a 
third placed on the outside of the track fence. We 
stand for fairness even in a dog fight. Yet we think 
it not amiss that our children are sent into the 
world with all its beauties, conveniences, and men- 
tal satisfactions as the prize, with millions of chil- 
dren under the handicap of poverty in the cradle 
while a select few inherit sums so vast as to give 
them the complete mastery of conditions from the 
moment they are born until they die, leaving the 
same mastery to the children who follow them. 



288 ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

It is true, however, that my proposal does not 
provide for the removal of all causes of inequality 
of opportunity. I make no such claim for it. I 
shall in another book discuss inequalities arising 
from private ownership of natural resources, es- 
pecially in non-use. 

Objection No. 17 

" The privilege of inheritance has been recognized 
by the laws of all civilized countries for thousands 
of years.'' 

The same has been true of slavery, monarchy, 
polygamy and murder. I was reading to my chil- 
dren one day some stories of cannibalism and of the 
killing of infants in barbarous lands when one of 
them said " Papa, is it true that people actually ate 
each other or is it only a story? '' I think that in 
the beautiful future day whose morning beams are 
alrea,dy flooding the world with radiance and light, 
it will be thus with the monstrous story of mon- 
archy and inheritance. Some sweet child raised in 
the sunlight of that new day will listen to the ter- 
rible tales of the night of greed when men and 
women were bound to the chariot wheel of the heir 
and children sacrificed to turn the w^heels of the 
mill. The child will say : '' Papa, is it really true 



ANSWERS TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 289 

that one child was born with a hundred million dol- 
lars while other children were born without enough 
to keep them alive, or is it only a story? " When 
mankind shall outgrow the theory that privilege is a 
necessary preliminary to progress, the twin fallacies 
of inheritance and ownership in non-use will be 
looked back upon with horror and disgust. That 
the truth of this anti-privilege sentiment, while 
recent, is epoch-making in its rapidity, can be 
plainly shown by a mere summary of the Inher- 
itance Tax laws of the last century, in the United 
States. 

C. J. Bullock, professor of economics, Harvard 
University, gives the following facts in his essay 
on the " Position of the Inheritance Tax in Ameri- 
can Taxation '' written in 1907 : 

The first inheritance tax imposed in the United 
States was in Pennsylvania, 1826. The inheritance 
taxes in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the United 
States were not successfully applied until about 
1885. 

In 1885 New York levied a collateral inheritance 
tax adding a direct inheritance tax in 1891. 

In 1894 Maryland and Pennsylvania collected 
$663,000 in inheritance taxes. 

In 1892, six states collected $3,107,000. 



290 ANSWEES TO COMMON OBJECTIONS 

In 1902, 28 states collected |7,138,000. 
In 1905, 30 states collected |10,600,000. 

To Mr. Bullock's statement I may add that in 
1918 there are 44 states collecting inheritance taxes 
and a heavy Federal tax is being imposed in 
addition to the existing State taxes. Mr. Bullock 
goes on to say, " Manifestly the taxation of inher- 
itance is no longer a debatable issue but must be 
accepted as an accomplished fact of American 
Finance." To this comment also I take the liberty 
of making an addition in paraphrase : " Mani- 
festly the ultimate extinction of the inheritance 
principle is no longer a debatable issue, but must 
be accepted as an inevitable step in the economic 
emancipation of the masses, toward which the whole 
world is travelling today with indescribable speed." 



APPENDICES 



I. U. S. Inheritance Tax Rates on January 1, 1917 



The following table shows the rates in each state on Jan. 1, 

1917: (From pp. 7 and 8, Bancroft, ''Inheritance Taxes for 

Investors.") 

Direct Inheritances Collateral Inheritances 

Rate Rate 

8tate per Exemption per Exemption 

cent. cent. 

Alabama — Not taxed — Not taxed 

Alaska — Not taxed — Not taxed 

Arizona t° 1 $5000 2-G $500 

Arkansas t'' 1-8 $1000-3000 8-24 $500 

California 1-15 $10,000-$24,000 3-30 $500-$2000 

Colorado ° 2-4 $10,000 3-10 $500 

Connecticut 1-4 $10,000 a 8-8 $500-$3000 a 

Delaware — Not taxed 1-5 $500 

District of Co- 
lumbia — Not taxed — Not taxed 

Florida — Not taxed — Not taxed 

Georgia "" 1 $5000 5 Nothing 

Hawaii 2 $5000 5 $500 

Idaho 1-3 $1000-$4000 1^-15 $500-$2000 

Illinois 1-2 $20,000 2-10 $500-$2000 

Indiana 1-3 ' $2000-$10,000 1^-15 $100-$500 

Iowa *b — Not taxed 5 $1000 

t The exemption in the States marked with a dagger depends 
in part on the size of the estate as a whole, and in part on the 
size of the individual share. 

° In the above States the distinction between direct and 
collateral inheritances is not exactly followed in making the 
rates of tax. 

* The exemption in the States marked with an asterisk has 
been construed to apply to the estate as a whole rather than to 
individual shares. 

a Only one exemption allowed in each class. 

t) Iowa taxes non-resident aliens 10-20 per cent. 

291 



292 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 



Direct Inheritances Collateral Inheritances 
Bate Rate 

States per per Exemption 
cent. Exemption cent. 

Kansas — Not taxed 3-15 $200-$5000 

Kentucky 1-3 $5000-$ 10,000 1^-15 $500-$2000 

Louisiana *c 2 $10,000 5 Nothing 

Maine 1-2 $500-$10,000 4-7 $500 

Maryland — Not taxed 5 $500 

Massachusetts .. 1-7 $1000-$10,000 8-10 $1000 

Michigan 1 $2000-$5000 5 $100 

Minnesota l-4i $3000-$10,000 3-15 $100-feiO00 

Mississippi — Not taxed — Not taxed 

Missouri — Not taxed 5 Nothing 

Montana * 1 $7500 5 $500 

Nebraska 1 $10,000 2-6 $50O-$20O0 

Nevada * 1-5 $10,000-$20,000 2-25 Nothing-$10,000 

New Hampshire ° — Not taxed 5 Nothing 

New Jersey 1-3 $5000 2-5 $500 

New Mexico ... — Not taxed — Not taxed 

New York ° 1-A $500-$5000 2-8 $500 

North Carolina , 1-5 $2000-$! 0,000 3-9 Nothing 

North Dakota d . 1-3 $10,000-$20,000 U-15 Nothing-$500 

Ohio * — Not taxed 5 $500 

Oklahoma 1-4 $50(X)-$15,O0O 5-10 $2,500 

Oregon e i $5000 2-6 $500-$2000 

Pennsylvania .. — Not taxed 5 $250 

Porto Rico 1-4 $200-$5000 3-12 $200 

Rhode Island f . . J-3 $25,000 5-8 $1000 

South Carolina . — Not taxed — Not taxed 

South Dakota .. 1-3 $SOOO-$10,000 14-15 $100-$1000 

Tennessee 1-1^ $10,000 5 $250 

Texas — Not taxed 2-12 $500-$2000 

Utah* 3-5 $10,000 3-5 $10,000 

Vermont — Not taxed 5 Nothing 

Virginia — Not taxed 5 Nothing 

Washington* ... 1 $10,000 3-12 Nothing 

West Virginia .. 1-3 $10,000-$ 15,000 3-15 Nothing 

Wisconsin 1-3 $2000-$10,000 li-15 $100-$500 

Wyoming* 2 $10,000 5 .$500 

United States : Tax is on estates of residents exceeding $50,000, 
lJ-15 per cent. No exemption to non-residents. 

♦The exemption in the States marked with an asterisk has 
been construed to apply to the estate as a whole rather than to* 
individual shares. 

° In the above States the distinction between direct and 



appe:n^dices 



293 



collateral inheritances is not exactly followed in making the 
rates of tax. 

<= Louisiana exempts property that bore its just proportion of 
taxes during owner's life. 

d North Dakota taxes non-resident aliens 25 per cent. 

e Oregon exempts entire estate if less than $10,000 direct ; $500 
to $5000 collateral. 

f Rhode Island also imposes a tax on the net estate of J per 
cent. ; exemption, $5000. 

II. U. S, Inheritance Tax Rates on January 1, 1918 

The following table shows the rates in each state on Jan. 1, 
1918, except that the rates shown for Virginia and Mississippi 
are those adopted March 15, 1918, and April 1, 1918, respec- 
tively : 



State 

Alabama 

Arizona 

Arkansas 1 

California 1 

Colorado 2 



Direct Inheritances Collateral Inheritances 

Exemption 



Bate 

per 

cent. 



Exemption 



Rate 
per 

cent. 



Connecticut . . 
Delaware .... 

Florida 

Georgia 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky . . . . 
Louisiana . . . . 

Maine 

Maryland . . . 
Massachusetts 
Michigan . . . . 
Minnesota . . . 
Mississippi * . 

Missouri 

Montana . . . . 
Nebraska . . . . 
Nevada 



-15 
- 4 



- 3 

- 2 

- 3 



- 3 

2 

- 2 

1 

■ - 41/2 
V2- 3 
. - 6 

1 

1 

- 5 



$5,000 2-6 

1,000- 3,000 4 -32 

10,000-24,000 3 -30 

10,000 3 -10 

10,000 3-8 

3,000 2-8 

5.000 *5 
1,000- 4,000 11/2-15 
20,000 2 -10 
2,000-10,000 11/2-15 
5 

' 5,()oo-*io,6o6 1 1/2-15 

10,000 5 

10,000 4-7 

5 

1,000-10,000 3 -10 

2,000- 5,000 5 

3,000-10.000 3 -15 

4.000- 7,500 5-8 

5,000-15,000 3 -30 

7,500 5 

10,000 2-6 

10,000-20,000 2 »-25 



5500-2,000 
500-1,000 
500-2,000 

500 
500-3,G00 

0-1,000 

"0" * 

500-2,000 
500-2,000 
100- 500 

1,000 

200-5,000 

500-2,000 



500 
500 
1,000 
100 
100-1,000 
500 
0- 500 
500 
500-2,000 
0-10,000 



294 THE ABOLITION OF raHEEITANCE 



state 



Direct 
Rate 

per 
cent. 



Inheritances Collateral Inheritances 
Bate 
Exemption 



New Hampshire 

New Jersey 1 - 3 

New Mexico 

New York 1 - 4 

N. Carolina 1 - o 

N. Dakota 1 - 3 

Ohio .... 

Oklahoma 1 -4 

Oregon 1 -4 

Pennsylvania ... 2 

Rhode Island i/^- 3 

S. Carolina 

S. Dakota 1 - 3 

Tennessee 1 - 1 % 

Texas 

Utah 3 - 5 

Vermont 1 - 5 

Virginia 1 - 5 

Washington 1 - .5 

West Virginia...! -3 

Wisconsin 1 - 5 

Wyoming 2 

United States 2 -25 



$5,000 



per 
cent. 

5 

2-5 



2-8 
3-9 



500- 5, 
2.000-10,000 

10,000-20,000 11/2-15 

5 

5,000-15,000 5 -10 

5,000 2 -10 
5 

25,000 5-8 



Exemption 



500 

'"566** 



500 

2,500 

500-1,000 

250 

1,000 



3,000-10,000 11/2-15 



10,000 



10,000 
10,000 
10,000 
10,000 
10,000-15,000 
1,000- 2,000 
10,000 
50,000 



5 
2 -12 
3-5 

5 

2 -15 

3 -15 
3 -15 
2 -15 

5 
2 -25 



100-1,000 

250 
500-2,000 
10,000 

1,00CK4,000 


100- 500 
500 
50,000 



* From Mississippi House Bill 556 reported Mar. 11, 1918. 
The bill was approved about Apr. 1, 1918, possibly with slight 
alterations. 

III. Blakemore and Bancroft. Inheritance Taxes 

Among the interesting historical facts that may be found in 
the first chapter of this great text-book are these : Inheritance 
tax laws were in effect in all but nine states of the Union in 
1912, and in all civilized countries, especially the Australasian, 
where the maximum tax is as high as 13 per cent in New 
Zealand and 20 per cent in Queensland. No capital has been 
driven away by these taxes, and great satisfaction with them 
is expressed, the rates being increased in most cases, from time 
to time. The United States Federal Government has used the 
Inheritance Tax as a special revenue producer after each of its 
great war periods : viz., in 1797-1802, 1862-1870, 1896-1902. 



APPENDICES 295 

The remainder of the time, inheritances have been taxed by the 
states only. The bulk of the book is devoted to court discus- 
sions of importance and to the presentation in full of the laws 
of the various states. The rates of taxation are given for the 
various civilized countries, the maximum varying from 6 per 
cent in Great Britain and 8 per cent in Russia to 20 per cent 
in Switzerland, where the proceeds are used for education and 
charity. In the United States, previous to the War Taxes 
of 1917, the rates were much lower than in other civilized 
countries. 

IV. Max West on Constitutionality of Inheritance Tax 

Max West (Monograph on the Inheritance Tax, p. 265) 
says : " The constitutionality of the Inheritance tax has been 
repeatedly tested in the courts and has nearly always been sus- 
tained." The exceptions have been in the states of New Hamp- 
shire, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, with unusual cir- 
cumstances prevailing in each case. Other courts have com- 
mented {Adversely upon the four decisions referred to, and the 
United States Supreme Court has invariably upheld the consti- 
tutionality of the tax. Details of court decisions are given in 
Blakemore and Bancroft hiheritance Taxes, a. number of them 
being quoted in Appendix V. 

y. Court Decisions on Inheritance Tax Laws 

Some of the most important points are as follows : 

An inheritance tax is a tax on succession: i.e., on the right 
to receive leather than the right to give. 

Pullen vs. Commissioners, 66 N. C. 361 (Supreme Court of N. 
C.) : " We do not regard the tax in question as a tax on 
property, but rather as a tax imposed on the succession." 

Wallace vs. Meyers, 38 Fed. Rep. 184 (United States Circuit 
Court) : "The tax is not a tax on property, but on this priv- 
ilege of acquiring property by inheritance." 

Knowlton vs. Moore, 178 United States, 41, 48, 49, 20 S. Ct. 
747, 44, Ed. 969 traces the history of European legislation and 



296 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

shows that the thing taxed is not the property, but the privilege 
of receiving transmitted property. 

State vs. Ferris 53, Ohio St. 314, 41 N. E. 579 shovs^s that the 
right to receive rather than the right to transmit is taxed. See 
also People vs. Griffith, 254, 111, 532, 98 N. E. 313. 

In re Macky, 45 Colo, 316, J02 p. 1075. "A tax upon the 
right to acquire interests by will or inheritance." 

Blakemore and Bancroft (Inheritance Taxes, p. 7) distin- 
guish between (a) The right to dispose of property during the 
lifetime of the owner, which cannot be separated from the 
property itself; (b) The right to dispose of property by will, 
which is a right not so closely connected with the property, and 
in which case it is not clear that such right may not be taxed ; 
and (c) The right to receive the property, which is a privilege 
distinct and separate from the property itself, and may be 
taxed whether the property is disposed of by the owner during 
his lifetime or after his death. That this tax is not a property 
tax, but a tax on the succession, these authors declare is 
affirmed by decisions in nearly every state in the Union. See 
statement of Max West, supra. 

The right to inherit is not a natural right hut a privilege, a 
creature of statute. 

In re Magnus, 32 Colo. 527, p. 853, and ten other cases (see 
Blakemore and Bancroft, p. 28). "The right of succession on 
death is the creature of law and not a natural right." 

Strode vs. Comm. 52 Pa. St. 181: "The constitution guar- 
antees to the citizen the right of receiving, possessing and pro- 
tecting property. Article 1, Section 1, which includes also the 
right of disposal ; but the guarantee ceases to operate at the 
death of the possessor. There is no provision of our constitu- 
tion or that of the United States which secures the right to 
any one to control or dispose of his property after his death, nor 
the right to any one, whether kindred or not, to take it by 
inheritance. Descent is a creature of statute and not a natural 
right." 

Magoun vs. Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, 170 United 
States 283, 290 : " The right to dispose of property by will has 



APPENDICES 297 

always been considered purely a creature of statute and within 
legislative control." See also in re Wilmerding's Estate, 117 
Cal. 281, 284, 49 p. 181 and United States vs. Perkins, 163 
United States 625, 627. 

Booth vs. Commonwealth, 130 Ky. 88, 113, S. W. 61, shows 
that inheritance is a privilege, not a right, and is therefore sub- 
ject to taxation. 

The State has superior rights respecting the disposal of 
estates. 

Matter of Swift, 50 N. Y. St. Rep. 81 : " The theory of sov- 
ereignty, which invests the state with the right and power to 
permit and to regulate the succession to property upon its 
owner's decease, rests upon a fact of actual dominion over that 
property . . . not because the legatee is subject to its laws . . . 
but because the state has a superior right of ownership." 

Eyre vs. Jacob, 14 Graft (Va.) 422, 430, 73 Am. Dec. 367: 
" The right to take property by devise or descent is the creature 
of the law and secured and protected by its authority. The 
legislature might, if it saw proper, restrict the succession to a 
decedent's estate, ... or it may tomorrow, if it pleases, abso- 
lutely repeal the statute of wills and that of descents and dis- 
tributions and declare that, upon the death of a party, his 
property shall be applied to the payment of his debts, and the 
residue applied to public uses. Possessing this sweeping power 
over the whole subject, it is difficult to see upon what ground 
its right to appropriate a modicum of the estate, call it a tax 
or what you will, . . . can be successfully questioned." 

Per Berkett, J., in State vs. Ferris, 53 Ohio St. 314, 41 N. E. 
579, approved in Gelsthorpe vs. Furnell, 20 Mont. 299, 51 P. 267, 
39 L. Rv A. 170 : " Properly understood it is not the right to 
transmit, but the right and privilege to receive, that is taxed. 
The right to dispose of property during the lifetime of the 
owner cannot be separated from the propert3^- itself, and there- 
fore to tax the right of disposal by contract in the lifetime of 
the owner, even though it take effect at his death, is to tax the 
property itself. But the right to dispose of the property by 
will or descent, taking effect after the death of the owner, is not 



298 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

so closely connected with the right of property and it is not 
clear that such right may not be taxed. But when the right 
to receive the property is considered, it is clear that the right 
is distinct and separate from the property itself, and the state 
may tax this right to receive property ; and this is so whether 
the property is disposed of by the owner during his lifetime 
or at his death. This right to receive property is under the 
control of the legislature and it has the power to regulate and 
lay such burdens thereon as it may see fit, within the provisions 
of the constitution. To regulate by taxation or otherwise the 
privilege or right to receive property is not in conflict with the 
first section of the bill of rights, which recognizes the inalien- 
able right of acquiring, possessing and protecting property. 
Were it otherwise all our laws as to wills, descent, distribution 
and conveyances would be unconstitutional." 

In re Inheritance Tax, 23 Colo. 492, 48 P. 536 shows that the 
state is held to have plenary power to regulate descent, or tax 
it, or prohibit it altogether. 

People vs. Griffith, 245 Illinois 532, 98 N. E. 313 shows that 
the state levies inheritance taxes as a condition for passing 
title to property, for transmission of which the authority of the 
state is complete and supreme. 

The tax cannot he evaded hp gifts made in contemplation of 
death. 

In re Gould, 156 N. Y. 423, 428. The will of Jay Gould recited 
that, his son having conducted his business for many years 
with great ability, he had fixed the value of his son's services 
at five million dollars ; and evidence was introduced that this 
legacy was by agreement in view of his son's services and was 
for compensation and for no other purpose. The court, how- 
ever, held that the gift was a " transfer " and subject to the 
inheritance tax. 

Slerrifield vs. People 212, Illinois 400, 72 N. E. 446, shows 
that gifts made by the living in contemplation of the death of 
the donor, cannot escape the inheritance tax even though the 
stipulation be made that the gift was absolute. 

People vs. Kelley 218 Illinois 509, 75 N. E. 1038 shows that 



APPENDICES 299 

the qnestion of whether or not a gift was made in contemplation 
of death is a question of fact and the finding of the court is 
final. 

In re Palmer, 17 N. Y. App. Div. 330, 102 N. Y. Suppl. 236, 
shows that the burden of evidence in transfers in contemplation 
of death is upon the heirs, who must show good faith. 

VI. Blackstone on Inheritance 

Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. II, Chap. 1, Sec. 10 : " The 
most universal and effectual way of abandoning property is by 
the death of the occupant ; when both the actual possession and 
Intention of keeping possession ceasing, the property which is 
founded on such possession and intention ought also to cease, 
of course. For, naturally speaking, the instant a man ceases 
to be, he ceases to have any dominion ; also, if he had a right 
to dispose of his acquisitions one moment beyond his life, he 
would also have a right to direct their disposal for a million of 
ages after him ; which would be highly absurd and incon- 
venient." 

After explaining that our inheritance law is a " civil conven- 
ience calculated for the peace of mankind " — which was of 
course true in Blackstone's day, — the great jurist continues : 
" We are apt to consider that it (inheritance) has nature on its 
side ; yet we often mistake for nature what we find established 
by long and inveterate custom. It (inheritance) is . . . clearly 
a political establishment." 

VII. Famous Political Economists on Inheritance 

See John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 
Book V, Chap. XI, Section 3. Mill advocated not only progres- 
sive inheritance taxes but the. abolition of the collateral inher- 
itance altogether, and a limitation of the amount which any one 
should be allowed to receive either by inheritance or bequest. 
In his AutoMographij (Gh. VII) he says: "We (his wife and 
himself) looked forv/ard to a time v/hen society will no longer 
be divided into the idle and the industrious ; when the rule that 



300 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to 
paupers only, but impartially to all." 

Jeremy Bentham, eminent jurist and economist, " wished to 
restrict inheritance and extend escheat (the reversion of estates 
to the government) and thus abolish taxation altogether." R. 
T. Ely (Outlines of Economics, p. 363) makes a masterly argu- 
ment against all collateral inheritances ; i.e., inheritances by 
others than the immediate family. Max West in his Monograph 
on InJieritance Taxes (pp. 195-6) cites many prominent 
economists in favour of heavy inheritance taxes. 

VIII. Modern Authorities on Taxation Commend 
Inheritance Tax 

The following, from the R-eport of the Minnesota Tax Com- 
mission, 1910, is singularly emphatic : " This method of in- 
creasing the public revenue is wise, simple and effective — wise 
because it does not touch private property during the life of 
the owner and thus places no burden on business activity ; 
simple because the tax is easily ascertained and collected while 
estates are in the probate court ; effe<:*tive, because by the appli- 
cation of progressive rates, it adds no burden to the poor, but 
permits those who have much to contribute to the government 
somewhat in proportion to their ability to pay. It invades no 
natural rights. It violates no maxim of the law. It over-leaps 
no constitutional barriers. It is neither revolutionary nor so- 
cialistic, but is on the contrary a measure of practical wisdom 
and social justice, and has been truly styled ' an institution of 
democracy.' Another desirable feature of the inheritance tax 
is that it cannot be shifted." 

Arthur B. Hayes, United States Solicitor of Internal 
Revenues, commends the inheritance tax as a fiscal measure in 
the following words : " The inheritance tax has been approved 
generally by writers upon political economy and systems of 
taxation, and it is almost universally held that no tax can be 
less burdensome or interfere less with the productive and indus- 
trial agencies of society. . . . Such tax laws have demonstrated 
thoroughly their utility as a successful means of raising 



APPENDICES 301 

revenue, and many eminent economists urge them in their ut- 
most severity as conducive of the public good. . . . Experience 
has demonstrated the comparative ease with which this tax can 
be collected, and the exceedingly small percentage of cost in its 
collection. — Expediency and political good judgment all seem to 
be in its favor." Arthur Hayes in Arena, Vol. 39, p. 33. 

Mr. Don Passes, one of the greatest authorities on inheritance 
tax laws, in his work on this subject, after stating that real 
property bears the brunt of direct taxation, says : " Personal 
property, however, in proportion to its immense value, generally 
escapes the hands of the collector ... to an alarming extent. 
An inheritance tax presents the most complete system for reach- 
ing the class of personal property and privilege which it is 
framed to embrace because . . . the dead man's property . . . 
must pass through a Surrogate or Probate Court." 

Augustus Jacobson in Higher Ground, Chap. XVIII, p. 42, 
says in speaking of an inheritance tax : " This tax would not 
and could not fall heavily upon anybody, because where there 
was no estate there would be no tax. It would not annoy a man 
of business struggling with difBculties because it would 
not be levied upon business, but only upon accumulations ac- 
tually left at death. If the estate were small it would be a very 
small tax, at a very small rate. If the estate were large the 
estate would pay a large tax, at a rate high in proportion to its 
size. If there were no accumulation there would be no tax." 

IX. ChAELES F. AkED on iNHERriANCE 

Chas. F. Aked, minister of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, 
popularly known as " Rockefeller's Church," says, in approval 
of the inheritance tax : " In a word, there are two parties to 
the accumulation of that wealth, the man and society. The 
man has had the enjoyment of it, society hitherto assenting. 
The ' heir ' has had nothing to do with the creation of it, and 
society is entitled to take back at least a part of that which 
it created." 



302 THE ABOLITION OF INHERITANCE 

X. Inheritance Tax Revenues in Geeat Britain 
AND Feance 

United States Senate Document No. 114, 60th Congress, 1st 
session, 1907, gives the following summary of inheritance tax 
rates and revenues in Great Britain and France: Great 
Britain, direct 1 per cent to 15 per cent; collateral 1 per cent to 
23 per cent. Annual revenue, $86,(XX),000. France — direct, 1 
per cent to 5 per cent ; collateral, one per cent to twenty per 
cent. Annual revenue, $55,000,000. In Great Britain, 4,172 es- 
tates were affected, with an assessed value of $1,091,000,000. 
The United States federal tax of March, 1917, though in con- 
templation of war needs, was not as great as those British and 
French taxes of ten years previous. Even added to our state 
taxes it was not much larger. (See Note to Preface, page 9, 
Note 2.) 

XI. Robert H. Written on Inheritance Tax 

As a splendid example of such arguments, note the following 
from the address of Dr. Robert H. Whitten before the National 
Tax Conference, 1901, which would apply with equal force to the 
escheat of estates: 

" One of the strongest arguments in favour of the inheritance 
tax arises from the recognized right and duty of the state to 
regulate inheritance to such an extent as the public welfare may 
require. The right of bequest and inheritance is a natural right 
only to the extent that it is socially useful ; that it furnishes an 
incentive to the creation of wealth or furthers its preservation 
or judicious management. Although we uphold devise and de- 
scent as the best known means of securing this end, yet we must 
admit that it is open to very serious objection and this very 
often fails completely. While the man who acquires wealth by 
that act gives evidence of his ability to manage it properly, it is 
by no means so certain that his heirs will possess that qualifica- 
tion. It is most fitting, therefore, that the state in apportioning 
the burden of taxation should take cognizance of this condition, 
and obtain a portion of its revenue from estates at the time of 



APPENDICES 303 

their transfer to hands that have given no evidence of their 
ability to manage them economically. Such a tax, if the rate be 
moderate, can only further the true social function of devise 
and descent ; i.e., the furtherance of the creation and judicious 
management of wealth. The tax is an incentive rather than a 
hindrance to the creation of wealth, and insures that after its 
transfer at death, a certain portion at least will serve a socially 
useful purpose." 

XII. Oarnegie and Others on the Inheritance Tax 

" By taxing estates heavily at death, the state marks its 
condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life. It is 
desirable that nations should go much farther in this direction." 
Andrew Carnegie in 'North American Review, Vol. 148, p. 659. 

" The Almighty Dollar bequeathed to children is an ' almighty 
curse.' No man has a right to handicap his son with such a 
burden as great wealth." Andrew Carnegie in The Oospel of 
Wealth. 

" The drastic application of the inheritance tax is eventually 
to be one of the most efficacious instruments in preparing the 
way for economic equality." The New Nation, March 4, 1893. 

In 1886, Pierre Lorillard, wealthy tobacco manufacturer, pro- 
posed a 10 per cent, tax on all estates over $200,000. See N. A. 
Rev., Dec, 1886. 



INDEX 



Accumulation (see also 
Wealth), 213 

Aked, Chas, F., Appendix IX 

Antiquity, not a defence of 
inheritance, 144-7 

Arguments against abolition 
of inheritance. See Ob- 
jections Answered 

Aristocracy, 46-7, 123^, 86- 
90 

Astor fortune, 232 

Astor, Vincent, 17, Preface 
xxvi 



Babylon, 104 

Baer, 199 

Bancroft, Hugh, 35, 281, Pref- 
ace XV 

Bentham, Jeremy, 35-54, Ap- 
pendix VI 

Bible (quoted), 16, 43, 69- 
152, 153, 190, 199, 263-4, 
280 

Blackstone, 66-195, Preface 
xvi, XXV, Appendix VI 

Blakemore and Bancroft, 
Preface xv, xxiii, Appen- 
dix II 



Bluntschli, 35 

Bonds, see Evidences of In- 
debtedness 

Bruno, 11 

Bullock, C. J., 289 

Burke, 75 

Business organization not in- 
jured 130-1, 280-2, 218- 
20 







California land grants, 30 

Caligula, 75 

Carnegie, Andrew, 173, Ap- 
pendix XII 

Child labour, 215 

Children, allowance for, 49, 
169-172, 257 

Civilization, inheritance an 
evil of, 135-143 

Civil War, cost of, Preface 

XX 

Columbus, 8 

Concentration of wealth, see 
Wealth 

Confiscation, 279-80 

Corporations, 700; large, 281 

Corruption, caused by in- 
heritance, 123-133 

Court Decisions on Inherit- 
ance Tax, Appendix V 



305 



306 



INDEX 



Cromwell, 11 
Czar, the last, 79 

D 

Darwin, 235 
Dead, The 
all of them should be con- 
sidered, 42-3 
have no authority, 38-41 
have no right to give, 35-45 
living generation not bound 
by, 44-5, 144-6 
Declaration of Independence, 

12 
Declaration of Rights 

(French), 6, 12 
Democracy, demands end of 

inheritance, 227-242 
Divine Right 
character of kings, 75-7 
doctrine of, 9, 72-9 
kings and heirs compared, 

80-91, 58-60 
still exists in money form, 

83-6 
titles of nobility, 84 



m 



Edison, Thomas, 11 

Education, 217 

Egypt, 103 

Ely, R. T., 35, Appendix VII 

Emerson, Preface xvi 

Enfantin, 35 



Ephesus, 280 
Equality 
of opportunity, desired, 47, 

283-4 
of wealth, not desired, 270, 
287-8 
Escheat, Preface x 
Estates (see also Wealth) 
of dead belong to commun- 
ity, 158-168 
when founded upon earned 

money, 37 
when founded upon un- 
earned money, 36 
Evidence of Indebtedness, 

110-2 
Exemption from taxation, 
maximum amount, 258-9 
Expectations of children, 54- 

5 
Expediency 
not an argument for in- 
heritance, 195-207 
but an argument against it. 
213-226 
Expense of governments, 220- 

3 
Extravagance, will not pro- 
mote, 282-3 



F 



Family power, Preface xxii 
Family ties (see also Senti- 
ment), 268 
Fanueil Hall, 156 
Field, Marshall, Preface ix 



INDEX 



307 



Force, the philosophy of, 

Fortunes (see also Wealth) 

how acquired, 269 

large, 95 

moderate, 214 

size of, 96 
Fox, 74-7 
Franklin, 11 



G 



Galileo, 1 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 11 

Generation 37, 75, 159 

one cannot bind another, 
37, 151, 160-2 
George, Henry, 11, 12, 21, 26, 
215, 229, 232, 278, Preface 
xix 
George III, 75 
Gifts 
before death, 51-2 
of remembrance, 50 
restrictions upon, 50-1, 
273-7 
Girard, Stephen, 283 
Gould, Jay, 26 
Great War, the, 108-234 
Greeley Expedition, 198 



H 



Hayes, Arthur B., Appendix 
viii 

Heirs 

ability of, 56, 130-1, 269 
basis of their claims, 31 



Heirs — continued 

can have no right without 
labour, 48-9 

character of, 129, 269 

limited to children of accu- 
mulation, 25-7 

no economic right to prop- 
erty, 46-53, Preface xviii 

power of, a burlesque on 
property, 62-4 

power of, 248-52, 109-115, 
249-50 

protected by capable em- 
ployes, 56-7, 125-7 

services of, 272 

small number of, 185 

supported by their own gen- 
eration, 21-5 
Henry, Patrick, 11 
Henry VIII, 65, 74 



Illinois State Bar Associa- 
tion, Preface xi 

Incomes, size of large, 96 

Inequality in natural endow- 
ment, 187-193 

Inequality (see Equality) 

Inheritance Principle, see 
Principle of Inheritance 

Inheritance taxation, history 
of, 289, Appendix III 

Inheritance Taxes, Constitu- 
tionality of, Appendix 
III, IV 

Inheritance Taxes, Court De- 
cisions, Appendix V 



30^ 



INDEX 



Inheritance Tax Rates, Pref- 
ace xi-xiv, XX, Appendix 
I, II 

Inheritance taxes, revenues 
from, 18, 289, 222^, Ap- 
pendix X, Preface xviii 

Inherited estates, annual size 
of, 66. (See also Wealth) 



Limitation of inheritance, 

amount, 258-9 
Lincoln, Abraham, 26, 47 
Lorillard, Appendix XII 
Louis XV, 75 
Luther, Martin, 9 
Lycurgus, 105 



M 



Jacob and Esau, 152 

Jacobson, Augustus, Appen- 
dix VIII 

Jefferson, Thomas J., 37, 75, 
159 

Jesus, 152, 199, 203 

Jubilee, Year of, 105 



Kies, W. S. 

Kings, see Divine Right 
Kitchin, Congressman, Pref- 
ace xiv 



Labour (see Property Rights), 
273 

Laconia, 106 

La Follette, Senator, 101 

Langdon, John, 75 

Legal Decisions on Inherit- 
ance Tax, Appendix V 

Levelling system, a, 250-2 

Lexington, 82 



Madison, James, 37 
Mandeville, Sir John, 8 
Marconi, 11 
Marshall, Chief Justice, 245, 

Preface xxi 
Mill, J. S., 13, 35, 106, 177, 

245, Preface xvi, xix, xx, 

Appendix VI 
Millionaires in U. S., number 

of, 18 
Milton, John, Preface ix 
Minors, 49, 169-172, 257 
Minnesota Tax Commission, 

Appendix VIII 
Monaco, 277 

Monarchy, see Divine Right 
Money power, extent of, 94-5. 

(See also Wealth) 
Monopoly, 214 
Monte Carlo, 278 
Morris, Robert, 26 
Moses, 105 
Myers, Gustavus, 269 



N 



National Assembly, French, 
12 



INDEX 



309 



Nature 
analogies from, 234-40 
does not justify inherit- 
ance, 195-200, 270 
favours equality of oppor- 
tunity, 146-7 
Necessary to other reforms, 

227, 231-4 
Nero, 75 
New Nation, The, Appendix 

XII 
Newton, 11 
Nietzsche, 238 
Non- Workers, Preface xvi 



O 



Objections Answered 
a levelling system, 250-2 
all children have equal 

rights now, 283-4 
antiquity of system, 146-7, 

288-90 
a product of civilization, 

135-143 
business is honest without 

it, 271-2 
business organization de- 
mands inheritance, 130-1, 

280-2 
character and industry of 

rich, 269 
confiscation, 279-80 
equality not desirable, 270 
expectations of children, 

54-5 
heirs entitled by service, 

272 



Objections Answered — con'd 

heirs soon lose fortunes, 56 

inequality cannot be pre- 
vented, 269 

justified by nature, 195-200, 
270 

labour is title to wealth, 273 

not expedient, 201-8 

not necessary as revenue 
measure, 277-9 

not necessary if other re- 
forms, 231-4 

not radical enough, 228-31 

only right when estate is 
unearned, 279 

right of gift exists, 273-7 

sentiment of parents, 169- 
186 

superior natural endow- 
ments, 187-193 

wealthy child requires finer 
nourishment, 55-6 

will promote extravagance, 
282-3 

would destroy family bond, 
268 

would not remove inequal- 
ity, 287-8 



Pascal, Preface xvi 
Paul, St., 280 
Persia, 103 

Pollock and Maitland, Pref- 
ace xxiii 
Post, Louis F., 24 



310 



INDEX 



Poverty 
extent of, 93-102 
inherited, caused by in- 
herited wealth, 109-122, 
136-9, 178-9 
will decrease, 215 
Precedent a legal not a moral 

defence, 148-157 
Primogeniture and entail, 52 
Principle of Inheritance 
a basic evil, 86-90 
at one time useful, 146 
enemy of democracy, 227- 
242 
Privilege 
definition and illustrations, 

28-30 
inheritance an important, 

30, 121-2 
menace to security of per- 
son abolished, 139-40 
Producers, see Property 

Rights 
Property 
real and fictitious, 223- 

4, 110-2 
real property is indestructi- 
ble, 223 
Property rights of producers 
to all property, 12-16 
based on labour of owner, 

54^64, 163 
inheritances belong to pres- 
ent generation, 158-167 
violated by inheritance, 17- 
20, 179 
Public, The, 24 



R 



Radical reform, a, 228-31 
Real property, see Property 
Reedy, Wm. Marion, 98 
Results 
accumulation will decrease, 

213 
better business, 218-20 
better morals, 218 
child labour will decrease, 

215 
education will increase, 217 
governments no longer an 

expense, 220-3 
moderate fortunes will in- 
crease, 214 
monopoly will decrease, 214 
other evils will decrease, 

215 
poverty will decrease, 215 
speculation will decrease, 

214 
wealth of mankind will in- 
crease, 223-5 
Revenues from inheritance 
taxation, 18, 220-3, 222- 
4, 277-9 
Richardson, George A., 48, 

87 
Ridpath, John Clark, 8, 9 
Robin Hood, 251 
Rockefeller, John D., 230 
Rome, 104, 139 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 107, 

Preface ix 
Runnymede, 156 



INDEX 



311 



s 

Schley, Commodore, 198 

Schwab, Chas. M., 175, 283 

Seligman, E. R. A., Preface 
xi 

Senate and House Docu- 
ments, 101 

Sentiment of parents, 169-186 

Single Tax (see also Henry 
George), 228-9, 232-4 

Slavery, 9, 11, 87-9, 141 

Smith, Adam, 12, Preface xix 

Socialism, 229, 232 

Soldier, more serious than 
heir, 127-8 

Sparta, 105 

Speculation, 214 

Speculators, 93 

St. Paul, 280 

Stocks, see Evidences of In- 
debtedness 

Summary of the arguments, 
253-265 

Superman, how to secure the, 
234^240 

Supporters of inheritance 
principle, 210, 240 

System, not individuals, re- 
sponsible, 142 



Taxation 

an adequate remedy, 223-5 
of industry unnecessary, 

246 
the means of remedy, 243- 

7 



Titles of nobility, 84 
Tolstoi, 11, 212 
Treitschke, 238 
Tribune, Chicago, Preface ix 
Twain, Mark, 142 

U 

Unearned Wealth, see Wealth 

U. S. Government expendi- 
ture, 18, 222, Preface xv 

U. S. Industrial Commission 
Report, 17, 94, 102 

U. S., Wealth of, Preface xix 



Von Bernhardi, 238 

W 

Wages of workingmen, 119, 96 

Watts, Isaac, 11 

Wealth 

amount of unearned, 121 

and wages compared, 96 

concentration, attempts to 
check, 105-8 

concentration of, in U. S., 
9a-102 

concentration, ruin of for- 
mer nations, 103-4 

easily increased after se- 
cured, 5t> 

equality of, not desired, 270 

excessive accumulations 
will disappear, 213-4 

extent of, 94-5 

extent of inherited, 66, 121 



312 



INDEX 



Wealth — continued 

inequitable distribution of> 

94-102, 162 
number of millionaires in 

U. S., 18 
of mankind will increase, 

223-5 
power of, 117-8 
unearned can be identified, 
244, 279 
Webster, Daniel, 94 
West, Max, 35, 257, Preface 
XV, xviii, xxiii, Appendix 
VII 



Western Pacific R. R., 30 
Westminster, Duke of, 26, 232 
Whitten, Robt. H., Appendix 

XI 
William and Mary, 78 
William the Conqueror, 26, 

251 
Wife, rights of, 36, 49, 257 
Wills, 65-71 
Witchcraft, 9 

World, The, New York, 95 
World War, cost of, Preface 

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